#staubyn

View On WordPress

'If there’s an opportunity for irony . . .’ ‘You’ll take it.’ ‘It’s the hardest addiction of all,’ said Patrick. ‘Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that 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.' (p37)

'But tell me,’ he said, ‘how was your expedition with Eleanor?’ ‘On the way back I found myself thinking that everybody who is meeting for dinner tonight will probably have said something unkind about everybody else. I know you’ll think it’s very primitive and American of me, but why do people spend the evening with people they’ve spent the day insulting?’ ‘So as to have something insulting to say about them tomorrow.'

Edward St. Aubyn, At last