101 Quotes by Paul Russell

"All desire, Tracy had had occasion since to think, is to some degree monstrous."

"I’m talking about other kinds of hunger. Desire."

"If certain places you came to in life felt right, then how many others were just as clearly the wrong place to be?"

"Romance always involved a bit of deceit."

"Despite his care, Reid was still playing with fire, the kind that could without warning sheathe one’s whole life in irreversible conflagration."

"The universe loves irony even more than it loves futility."

"And now none of it could be undone. That was the exquisite irony: the act that had undone everything could not itself be undone."

"Louis 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."

"When you get right down to it, we don’t ever want to know one another too well. We want there to be that mystery. Where there’s mystery, there’s hope."

"To speak a language that was as intimate and free as certain dreams, saying darkly, thrillingly, My cock inside of you. Your come in my mouth ... He focused on the boy’s slim, tight hips; with the tip of his tongue he tasted an asshole’s bitter, forbidden mystery."