"I don't think that everything you consume has to be... deep and meaningful and intellectually stimulating. Sometimes you really do just want to switch your brain off for a while," he admitted. He wasn't some sort of total bore, who could only read Tolstoy and talk about the state of modern art. "Just gotta remember to turn it back on when you rejoin the real world."
Of course, Ernest already knew quite a lot about Abi's experiences in foster care, so he had to be very careful what he did with his face. It usually ended up being either a stern looked of barely controlled anger and disgust at her so-called guardians, or a softer look as he resolved never to let anyone hurt her again. "You've got to make mistakes, or nothing ever changes, you never grow as a person. Fucked up and independent is good, I think," he nodded.
He smiled, and gave her a thoughtful nod when she called Paris his soul. "A big part of it, yes," he agreed, although he didn't add that it was now second runner to a whole other part of his life. One that would never make any biography, one they would never find letters from. In his own version of events, they would write it off as a delusion and it would be swept under the rug by any self-respecting archiver. They might find a name or a strange reference in a margin, but no one would figure it out, not really. And she was meant to know all about that part of his soul. Maybe she never would, now. "Of course it can't. You'd start wondering what the hell the point off all the suffering was if it never led you any closer to a sense of happiness," he agreed. "Poor old Proust, eh?"
Her rhetorical question played nicely to his ego, even though he knew that they had been right to knock them back. You couldn't publish the wild ramblings of a madman, at least not while he was still alive and in treatment for 'personal issues'. His name wasn't what it had been. It had a whole new set of connotations attached to it, and most people didn't want him sticking to their reputation. "Oh, yeah. I know. Harry Potter." He knew that it might surprise her, and it strangely pleased him to be able to say it.
Abi and chocolate, it always cheered him to see how much pleasure she could get from a simple thing like a good piece of cake. "Good! You've got to get your fix of pleasure around here wherever you can," he told her, of course talking only about the cake. He was sure they had done some filthy things with frosting in their time, although the memory was a little hazy. He'd have to recreate it, capture a new memory. He realised he was probably giving her a bit of a filthy look, and he went about putting a little milk in his coffee to stop himself.