EDWARD ST AUBYN

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the 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.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.

The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.

I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.

I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

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

The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.

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.

The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

The whole 'Melrose' series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?

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

I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the 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.

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.