Edward St Aubyn

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. ”

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

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

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. ”