Patrick Melrose Quotes

“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.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, At Last

“What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience so far?”
― Edward St. Aubyn, At Last

“He knew as deeply as he knew anything that sedation was the prelude to anxiety, stimulation the prelude to exhaustion and consolation the prelude to disappointment, and so he lay on the red velvet sofa and did nothing to distract himself from the news of his mother’s death.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, At Last

“Suicide wore the mask of self-rejection; but in reality nobody took their personality more seriously than the person who was planning to kill himself on its instructions. Nobody was more determined to stay in charge at any cost, to force the most mysterious aspect of life into their own imperious schedule.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, At Last

“He wondered if he could ever make his ego light enough to relax in not having to settle the meaning of things. What would that feel like?”
― Edward St. Aubyn