“Simplification was dangerous and would later take its revenge. Only when he could hold in balance his hatred and his stunted love, looking on his father with neither pity nor terror but as another human being who had not handled… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“If you were madly in love, you’d want me to win,’ said Katherine. “‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ said Sam. ‘I think love is about equality: both of us equally happy with either result. One-sided self-sacrifice is only enabling someone else’s egoism. Altruists always end up riddled with resentment, or if they make that last superhuman effort, with spiritual pride.’… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“Was he, after all, really a bad man doing a brilliant impersonation of an idiot? It was hard to tell. The connections between stupidity… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“But then neither revenge nor forgiveness change what happened. They’re sideshows, of which forgiveness is the less attractive because it represents a collaboration with… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“Old enough to remember the arrival of 'Have a nice day', Patrick could only look with alarm on the hyperinflation of 'Have a great… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“The Queen was saying only the other day that London property prices are so high that she doesn’t know how she’d cope without Buckingham… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“Nobody ever died of a feeling, he would say to himself, not believing a word of it, as he sweated his way through the… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“..."the waiting-room atmosphere in which death was the delayed train...” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“An image flashed across her mind of two rams flinging their heads against each other on a rocky mountainside. What did the girl rams… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
“But that, after all, was the point of romantic folly. If it hadn’t all gone horribly wrong, it wouldn’t have been the real thing.” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share Image
