Edward St Aubyn famous quotes

05-13-2025

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Giving Up #Mean #Two
No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Hurt #Pain #Bigs
People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#People #Suffering #Details
The first book I fell in love with was 'Little Toot,' the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#New York #Book #Adorable
The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Impossible #Novel #Feels
Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#People #Way #Detachment
I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Writing #Want #Favour
I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Book #Reading #People
Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Reading #Hero #Intelligent
The whole 'Melrose' series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Ideas #Telling The Truth #Liberating
The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Winning #Heavyweights #World
It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Together #Use #Conversation
I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Trying #Facts #Dramatic
I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Laughter #Thinking #Horror
Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Writing #Attractive #Difficult
It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Believe #People #Dying
Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Children #Giving Up #Fighting
Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Usual #Clinging #Stuck
Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Men #Argument #Adverbs
You can only give things up once they start to let you down.
-- Edward St Aubyn

#Giving

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