Edward St. Aubyn

"Johnny stopped and leaned over, partly from curiosity, but also to disguise the fact that his sexual efforts could not compete with the mention of such a large sum of money."

"There could be no negotiation between people who thought that cocaine was a vaguely naughty and salacious drug and the intravenous addict who know that it was an opportunity to experience the arctic l…"

"But do you know what struck me, apart from Nancy’s vibrant self-pity, which she had the nerve to pretend was grief?"

"Without speech, thoughts plough on like a train without tracks, buckling, crashing, ripping everything apart."

"The tragedy was that five or perhaps ten years of decent five-day-a-week analysis could have mitigated the problem significantly."

"Men used to tell me how they used butter for sex, now they tell me how they’ve eliminated it from their diet."

"No man is an island — although one’s known a surprising number who own one."

"The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates."