Paul Russell Quotes

Why not simply surrender to one’s doom, since one was so clearly, so spectacularly, doomed?

Our 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.

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

My 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.

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.

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.

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

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.