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

In the eight years since his father’s death, Patrick’s youth had slipped away without being replaced by any signs of maturity, unless the tendency for sadness and exhaustion to eclipse hatred and insanity could be called ‘mature’.

Mind you, I don’t know why people get so fixated on happiness, which always eludes them, when there are so many other invigorating experiences available, like rage, jealousy, disgust, and so forth.

When a man of my father’s wealth dies of cancer, you know they haven’t found a cure.