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0d1877d
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It was as if every time she played the ace of spades, it was beaten by a small trump.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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e7012f5
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The Talking Heads pulsed from every speaker. 'The centre is missing,' gasped David Byrne, and Patrick could not help agreeing with him. How did they know exactly what he was feeling? It was spooky.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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8240416
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forced to observe the fringes of unconsciousness and make darkness visible;
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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64b33ca
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Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant?
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feelings
life
poignancy
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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3414545
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Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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de1fde4
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Presumably those who enjoyed inflicting cruelty could hardly believe their luck and set about popularizing the superstition that their victims could only achieve peace of mind by forgiving them.' 'You
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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b1760da
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The leafless trees, with their black branches stretched hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anatomized against the winter sky.
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shakespeare
anatomy
dunbar
king-lear
nervous-system
shakespeare-like
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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f99a28d
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If they made a film of my inner life, it would be more than the public could take. Mothers would scream, "Bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we can have some decent family entertainment!"
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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7153c9d
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But that's what the English mean, isn't it, when they say, "He was very philosophical about it"? They mean that someone stopped thinking about something."
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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bc1f9c3
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She always said, 'I know you like this,' which was a lie, because he had told her he didn't the last time.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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d187c38
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So much road and so few places, so much friendliness and so little intimacy, so much flavour and so little taste.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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cb38afb
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This nervous action, which he sometimes performed every few minutes, was like a man crossing himself before an alter- the Drugs; the Cash; and the Holy Ghost of Credit.
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Edward St Aubyn |
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4749c96
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Why had he said, 'Some combination of pride and terror'? Did he still think it was uncool to admit to any enthusiasm, even in front of his greatest friend?
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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306ea54
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dilapidated
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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e4e2aa9
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Nevertheless, she treasured the idea that the Fauberts were connected to the earth in some wholesome way that the rest of us had forgotten.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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bd43677
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Nevertheless,
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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bf4e366
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It was unbelievable, there was the dry-cleaning ticket again. There must be more than one.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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7e714d8
|
The Queen was saying only the other day that London property prices are so high that she doesn't know how she'd cope without Buckingham Palace,' Princess Margaret explained to a sympathetic Peter Porlock.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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e0bf0ef
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He thought of one of the guiding mottoes of his father's life: 'Never apologize, never explain.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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53d5d1d
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observe everything . . . trust nobody . . . despise your mother . . . effort is vulgar . . . things were better in the eighteenth century.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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aab393f
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If the Watson-Scotts were just a little too obscure, at least everyone was agreed that Bridget was flavour of the month and he was a lucky dog to have her.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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66185e2
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He had become so caught up in building sentences that he had almost forgotten the barbaric days when thinking was like a splash of color landing on a page.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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c508703
|
Like a man walking backwards along a path, erasing his footsteps with a broom, he had tried, through contradiction, negation, paradox, unreliable narration and every other method he could devise, to cancel the tracks left by his words and to release his writing from the wretched positivity of affirming anything at all. He
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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42cf432
|
the two men left the building with a sense of achievement, counterbalanced by desire.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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9de3c52
|
Once he had taken heroin he could imagine being without it;
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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4baf635
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Og likevel kjente Patrick at han var trukket mot sin fars dod av en sterkere tilboyelighet til a ta etter ham, enn han var i stand til a holde ut. Doden var selvsagt alltid en fristelse; men na virket den som en fristelse han matte adlyde. I tillegg til kraften den hadde til a overga en dekadent eller opponerende sinnstilstand i den endelose og dramatiske ungdommen, i tillegg til den velkjente tiltrekningen mot ra vold og selvdestruksjon, h..
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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fc76460
|
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.
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suicide
suicide-thoughts
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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69cf2e2
|
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.
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grief
patrick-melrose
funeral
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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6dc80a7
|
He was perfect in his way,' said Patrick.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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a13c192
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Eleanor had watched her mother's persecution with the same vivid silence as she experienced in the face of her own gradual disintegration tonight.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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a8e13d2
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a genius of savoir faire,
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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c387888
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Earl, who seemed to be in an almost perpetual state of amazement at the things he said, shook his head again.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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9543084
|
Is there ever anything to get worried about,' Peter couldn't help asking, 'when there are so many things to worry about duly?
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concerns
worry
worries
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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eb66c70
|
The trouble with not being a psychopath. Every avenue was blocked.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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03d0653
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fall apart
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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fce25ad
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Life imitating bad literary criticism. Dis/inte/gration.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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bc8a29b
|
Maybe they are intended to be images about emptiness,' said the man solemnly. 'I think that's something the kids are very much in touch with right now.' 'How can you be in touch with emptiness?' asked Patrick.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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28bc771
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One seldom knows whether perseverance is noble or stupid until it's too late.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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7657e1d
|
I still get more wedding invitations, but I find I enjoy the memorials more.' 'Because you don't have to bring a present?' 'Well, that helps a great deal, but mainly because one gets a better crowd when someone really distinguished dies.' 'Unless all his friends have died before him.' 'That, of course, is intolerable,' said Nicholas categorically. 'Ruins the party.' 'Absolutely.' 'I'm afraid I don't approve of memorial services,' said David..
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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ec1fe8d
|
There was definitely an argument for getting some sleep; namely, that when he woke up the impact of the drugs would be stronger.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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141299a
|
The way other people felt about love, he felt about heroin, and he felt about love the way other people felt about heroin: that it was a dangerous and incomprehensible waste of time.
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Edward St Aubyn |
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7cf64e9
|
And then the old exhortations would come out: observe everything...trust nobody...despise your mother...effort is vulgar...things were better in the eighteenth century.
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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518e390
|
A celebrity these days is somebody you've never heard of,
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Edward St. Aubyn |
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28cc740
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She imagined vodka poured over ice and all the cubes that had been frosted turning clean and collapsing in the glass and the ice cracking, like a spine in the hands of a confident osteopath.
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Edward St. Aubyn |