Still, the illusion of love had, in its time, led to stranger depravities.

— Paul Russell

That’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

The angel descended when you were least expecting it. Tracy felt something quietly go click in his despairing heart.

— Paul Russell

The body was an organic machine, period, and God was a figment of its fitful imagination.

— Paul Russell

The past is the past. It’s the present we should worry about.

— Paul Russell

There must have been a time, before Internet porn, when there wasn’t a script. Nowadays, everybody knows exactly how sex is supposed to go.

— Paul Russell

There’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

There was no denying it. Boys grabbed him. Their loveliness tore him apart. The world was a wonder after all.

— Paul Russell

The universe loves irony even more than it loves futility.

— Paul Russell

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.

— Paul Russell