“Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all… — 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… — 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
“If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“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
“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
“People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
“..."the waiting-room atmosphere in which death was the delayed train...” — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“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
“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
“Try as one might to live on the edge, thought Patrick, getting into the other lift, there was no point in competing with people… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“He had only just made the Elysian deadline; hanging onto the typescript until the last moment in case there was something still to be… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
“The mess that's emerging...at least reflects the truth of my experience, the fact that every contemplation is interrupted, and that every interruption becomes further… — Edward St. Aubyn Copy Share
