104 Quotes by Edward St Aubyn

Just before the top of the hill she stopped, breathed deeply, and tried to muster her scattered sense of calm, like a bride checking her veil in the last mirror before the aisle.

I’m not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

Most people either felt regret at staying with someone for too long, or regret at losing them too easily. I manage to feel both ways at the same time about the same object.

In the Dodge City of romantic love, crowded with betrayal, abandonment and rejection, it was better to fire first than to take the risk of being gunned down.

He had become so caught up in building sentences that he had almost forgotten the barbaric days when thinking was like a splash of color landing on a page.

His conscience, like a sunburnt scorpion, was stinging itself to death.

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.

An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.

The first book I fell in love with was ‘Little Toot,’ the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.