Paul Russell Quotes

Source: The Coming Storm

“He wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.”

Idealism Desires Oblivion Criminal Mad Forbidden

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“And Chris remembers: what they used to talk about was desire. Impossible, longing dreams. Delirious, aching confusion. That was the vital element they lived off … because it was the one thing that mattered. Not things, or achievements, or politics, or fracking or anything else: just sweet naked blameless unending desire.”

Desire

Book:Immaculate Blue

Source: Immaculate Blue

“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.”

School Education Teaching Teachers Greeks

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that the unfortunate thing about life is that everything’s mixed. There’s no absolute good and there’s no absolute evil. There’s just a lot of confusion.”

Life Evil Good Absolute Mixed

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

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

World Wonder Boys Loveliness Tore

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Was 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?”

Madness Appetites Marauding

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

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

Past Worry Present

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Waiting, he thought, was the most miserable condition a man could find himself in. His whole life, he had been waiting for one thing or another.”

Life Waiting Miserable Man Condition

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“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.”

Arms Lonely Mark Touch Lives

Book:The Salt Point

Source: The Salt Point

“Class, she reminded herself, was the real marker in America.”

Real America Class Marker

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“You 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.”

Want Need

Book:The Salt Point

Source: The Salt Point

“Tracy 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.”

Sky Threat Clouds Grandeur

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Shirtless, 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.”

Sun Grass Shirtless Thunderheards

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“It was a failure of pedagogical nerve, she reminded herself, to give up on a student.”

Failure Student Pedagogical

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“And anyway, never, never apologise the morning after for what your hormones were telling you last night.”

Last Night Hormones Morning After Apologise

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“The former East Germany hardly had a monopoly on complicity. Life’s every moment caught one out in one form or another.”

Complicity East Germany

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“The damage love does when love goes astray. And did it ever, given half a chance, fail to wander?”

Love Wander Damage Astray

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Anarchy raised its seductive head. He could do anything; there was nothing that was not allowed.”

Anarchy Seductive Allowed

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Leigh stands there, not so much a figure to scare crows as to beckon doves.”

Crows Doves

Book:The Salt Point

Source: The Salt Point

“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.”

Language Dreams Mystery Forbidden Cock Asshole

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“I’ll put it to you simply: love is the enemy. That’s my conclusion. We should all live in our little monk cells and never venture out ...”

Love Enemy Cells Live Venture Monk Out Conslusion

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Anybody can be anybody, he told himself as he eased his body down onto Devin’s, the blunt pain of a beautiful pleasure wedging him open.”

Anybody Can Be Blunt Pain Beautiful Pleasure Wedging Open

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Louis could never shake the suspicion that some people, whether consciously or not, called the storm to themselves.”

People Storm Called

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“He had had an inkling, even then, that only by losing himself, the well-behaved Connecticut boy he’d always been, might he ever hope to find his other, truer self.”

Find Well Behaved Losing Himself Truer

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“What was inside him would never go away. What had happened would never not have happened.”

Happened Inside

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“The slippery slope was everywhere.”

Slippery Slope

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“When 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.”

Write Pen Hard On Jerking Off Story Urge

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Louis had learned to be suspicious of the word educational. It covered, after all, a multitude of sins.”

Educational Sins Multitude

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“The presence of the policeman around the corner is the only thing that keeps us civilised.”

Civilised Policeman

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“But men are such strange creatures, really. I think most of them would rather we weren’t around at all, so they could just spend time mooning over each other. Hero worship and all that stuff.”

Men Strange Creatures Hero Worship Mooning

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“The miracle,” Claire said, “is that anybody stays together.”

Miracle Stay Together

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Does everybody always have to be on the prowl for love?”

Love Prowl

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“What bound people together was so fragile.”

People Fragile Bound Together

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“If it was to be a time of momentous changes, then why not allow oneself to be swept along?”

Time Changes Momentous Swept Along Onself

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Love loves anarchy. It loves to wreak havoc. It loves to dance atop the ruins.”

Love Dance Ruins Havoc

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

“Was there anything quite so painful, so fraught with the possibilities of hurt, as gift giving within a family?”

Hurt Family Possibilities Gift Giving

Book:The Coming Storm

Source: The Coming Storm

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