Class, she reminded herself, was the real marker in America.
Anarchy raised its seductive head. He could do anything; there was nothing that was not allowed.
The angel descended when you were least expecting it. Tracy felt something quietly go click in his despairing heart.
As long as we do violence to other animals, we’ll keep on doing violence to ourselves.
What did beauty matter, anyway?
The body was an organic machine, period, and God was a figment of its fitful imagination.
There was no denying it. Boys grabbed him. Their loveliness tore him apart. The world was a wonder after all.
Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.
I think good conversation is really the best form of sex.
Love loves anarchy. It loves to wreak havoc. It loves to dance atop the ruins.
Still, for all that, her life had lacked passion. The demons had never come for her.
All desire, Tracy had had occasion since to think, is to some degree monstrous.
I’m talking about other kinds of hunger. Desire.
He wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.
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, ...
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 ...
You’re the enemy. You’re the one who’s going to defeat yourself.
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.
It was a failure of pedagogical nerve, she reminded herself, to give up on a student.
Was there anything quite so painful, so fraught with the possibilities of hurt, as gift giving within a family?
Despite his care, Reid was still playing with fire, the kind that could without warning sheathe one’s whole life in irreversible conflagration.
