Do you even know what gay stands for? Well, let me tell you. G-A-Y. Got Aids yet?

— Paul Russell

Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.

— Paul Russell

For eventually one gets over reality’s affront to one’s innocence. One grows accustomed to the melancholy fact that we all sell ourselves at one time or another, that whoring is the dirty little secret of our success as human beings.

— Paul Russell

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

— Paul Russell

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

— Paul Russell

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.

— Paul Russell

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 ...

— Paul Russell

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

— Paul Russell

I think good conversation is really the best form of sex.

— Paul Russell

It 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