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Edward St. Aubyn Quotes

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Famous Edward St. Aubyn Quotes

“An image flashed across her mind of two rams flinging their heads against each other on a rocky mountainside. What did the girl rams do? Faint with pleasure? Clap their cloven hooves? Lean against some nearby boulders, with little tubs of mountain grass, discussing the battle?”

Pleasure Discussing Rams Butting Their Heads Girl Rams

Book:Lost For Words

Source: Lost For Words

“He had to have her, he definitely had to have her. She was not merely the latest object on which his greedy desire to be saved had fixed itself; no, she was the woman who was going to save him. The woman whose fine intelligence and deep sympathy and divine body, yes, whose divine body would successfully deflect his attention from the gloomy well shaft of his feelings and the contemplation of his past.”

Desire Salvation Lust Twilight

Book:Bad News

Source: Bad News

“Eating was only a temporary solution. But then all solutions were temporary, even death, and nothing gave him more faith in the existence of an afterlife than the inexorable sarcasm of Fate.”

Fate Afterlife

Book:Bad News

Source: Bad News

“Is there ever anything to get unduly worried about,' Peter couldn't help asking, 'when there are so many things to worry about duly?”

Worry Concern Worries Concerns

Book:Dunbar

Source: Dunbar

“Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly?”

Suffering Clarity Self Knowledge Lucidity

Book:Dunbar

Source: Dunbar

“Our concept is sharing,' lisped Sam, 'as a waiter once said to me in a restaurant I never went back to. The food was delicious, but I couldn't get past the "concept". I can just about put up with conceptual art—if I'm caught in a thunderstorm and there's a warm gallery across the street—but conceptual food is out of the question.”

Humor Food Conceptual Art

Book:Parallel Lines

Source: Parallel Lines

“Capital erosion was another way to waste his substance, to become as thin and hollow as he felt, to lighten the burden of undeserved good fortune, and commit a symbolic suicide while he still dithered about the real one. He also nursed the opposite fantasy that when he became penniless he would discover some incandescent purpose born of his need to make money.”

Money

Book:Bad News

Source: Bad News

“He found her pretty in a bewildered, washed-out way, but it was her restlessness that aroused him, the quiet exasperation of a woman who longs to throw herself into something significant, but cannot find what it is.”

Restlessness Arousal

Book:The Patrick Melrose Novels

Source: The Patrick Melrose Novels

“Might have stayed': the emptiest tense of all, not just past but conditional, the breeding ground of yearning and regret and counter-factual speculation.”

Regret Yearning Grammar

Book:Parallel Lines

Source: Parallel Lines

“What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience so far?”

Past Memories Emotions Patrick Melrose

Book:At Last

Source: At Last

“People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.”

Happiness Suffering

Author:Edward St. Aubyn

“There was no satisfaction in betraying people who had already defected.”

Betrayal

Book:Dunbar

Source: Dunbar

“If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.”

Betrayal Cruelty Closed Doors

Book:Lost For Words

Source: Lost For Words

“Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant?”

Life Feelings Distress Poignancy

Book:Dunbar

Source: Dunbar

“If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. Only the mediocre, pushing forward a commonplace view of life in a commonplace language, can really be compared, but my wife thinks that "least mediocre of the mediocre" is a discouraging title for a prize[.]”

Art Literary Prizes

Author:Edward St. Aubyn

“We are entering the Dark Ages, my friend, but this time there will be lots of neon, and screen savers, and street lighting.”

Dark Ages Neon Street Lighting Screen Savers

Book:Lost For Words

Source: Lost For Words

About the Author

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Quotes: 16

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DunbarRelated source material

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At LastRelated source material

The Patrick Melrose NovelsRelated source material