Date: 1992

"The smell of cocaine assailed him and he felt his nerves stretching like piano wires."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"His thoughts shimmered like a hesitating stream, gathering into pools of discrete and vivid imagery."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"Looking at the leaves turn red in the valley simplifies my mind, a javelin flying past those tightly packed tubes of paint in which so many subtle frequencies of light have been trapped, and landing where there is only blood and fire."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"This is after all the heart of the matter, the place where everything -- not without difficulty, not without civil war, not without nailing down my tongue and drawing over it the serrated knife of one thing after another, not without learning to thank my torturers because it's been such a growth...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"It's the medium-sized thoughts that jump ship in an emergency."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"The feeling raged through him, like a burning rope he couldn't hold on to, although someone he loved was falling at the other end of it; it ripped the skin from his hands."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"'I must have done,' I said, feeling the memory of another dozen books slide down Lethe's greasy banks."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"The grief a loving son would feel, and of which I had no inkling when my own mother was lowered into her flinty grave, tornadoed through me at the news of the countess's death."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"I dread the prospect of the pressure of death roaming through my psyche like a wildcat prospector and producing these eruptions of unwelcome insight."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"I rolled my forehead against hers, trying to break through the fortress of our lonely skulls and meld our yearning minds."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)