02UndatedLouis thought he would be all for a back-to-the-basics drive in education: a teacher, an olive tree, a bit of midday wine (the Greeks had watered theirs down to keep their heads lucid), and, last but not least, six or seven eager and receptive youths seated at one’s feet.Paul Russell / quote ↗
03UndatedPeople always knew more than you gave them credit for. Perhaps, in the end, no one had any secrets at all.Paul Russell / quote ↗
05UndatedAnd now none of it could be undone. That was the exquisite irony: the act that had undone everything could not itself be undone.Paul Russell / quote ↗
06UndatedWhen he got a story urge, there was nothing to do but grab a pen and write. Otherwise it was too much like getting a hard-on and not jerking off.Paul Russell / quote ↗
07UndatedThere’s always people looking the other way when the miracles take place, people who want only a good night’s sleep when the stars are dancing, comets falling, the angels leaning low out of midnight with their trumpets, their cantatas of longing.Paul Russell / quote ↗
08UndatedThere was no denying it. Boys grabbed him. Their loveliness tore him apart. The world was a wonder after all.Paul Russell / quote ↗
09UndatedWas it a form of madness, no longer to be able to trust your sense of things? To be betrayed by decisions apparently arrived at carefully and through reason, but really no more than marauding appetites cunningly tricked out as reasonable choices?Paul Russell / quote ↗
10UndatedDespite his care, Reid was still playing with fire, the kind that could without warning sheathe one’s whole life in irreversible conflagration.Paul Russell / quote ↗
11UndatedLove loves anarchy. It loves to wreak havoc. It loves to dance atop the ruins.Paul Russell / quote ↗
12UndatedDo you even know what gay stands for? Well, let me tell you. G-A-Y. Got Aids yet?Paul Russell / quote ↗
13UndatedIt is Halloween,” he explains coyly. “I wanted to come out as something beautiful. None of this witch stuff for me. My God, don’t we spend our whole life as witches?Paul Russell / quote ↗
14UndatedStill, the illusion of love had, in its time, led to stranger depravities.Paul Russell / quote ↗
15UndatedIf certain places you came to in life felt right, then how many others were just as clearly the wrong place to be?Paul Russell / quote ↗
16UndatedShirtless, they’d stretch out in the long grass and take the healing brunt of a noontime sun that gave no clue of the thunderheads it already, in secret, had begun to breed.Paul Russell / quote ↗
17UndatedTracy had never been so conscious of the sky above the earth, the dangerous clouds that gathered there, the way humans lived beneath such grandeur and threat every moment of their lives.Paul Russell / quote ↗
18UndatedHe wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.Paul Russell / quote ↗
19UndatedYou get exactly what you want, Anatole’s always suspected, only when you get it it’s no longer what you want, you need something else.Paul Russell / quote ↗
20UndatedAbsolutely, love matters,” she reiterated. “We forget that at our own risk.Paul Russell / quote ↗
21UndatedThat’s the way Chris lives, warning everyone who gets close of the lightning that may strike. Never touch anything, never make a mark. But Anatole can’t live that way. The world’s too lonely a place: he has to touch things, he has to put his arms around them.Paul Russell / quote ↗
22UndatedMy darlings! You can hardly expect an aged crone like me to mar such a lovely event. No, I shall remain here and knit shadows. Now go forth and shine bravely, and think of nothing but love.Paul Russell / quote ↗
23UndatedThe angel descended when you were least expecting it. Tracy felt something quietly go click in his despairing heart.Paul Russell / quote ↗
24UndatedOur students didn’t used to come from such damaged families,” Louis mused. “It’s true what they say. This country really is coming apart at the seams.Paul Russell / quote ↗
