Damon Suede

“He needed me to make it okay.”

“You‘re my best friend. You‘re the only somebody I got.”

“Griff held his breath, waiting for it, knowing the axe would fall and he‘d start dying as soon as he walked out the fucking door, and Dante would just grin and joke and try to forget what they had done together in this room.”

“LOVE IT! :) Yeah. They've been doing BIG billboards of this in the gayborhoods in NYC, LA and SanFran. Although I wouldn't fuck a Scientologist on a dare. 8| ”

“Just then Dante leaned against him, brow between his shoulder blades for a moment, so tentatively Griff held his breath. His voice was almost sheepish. “Nah. Everyone knows I was born defective. They didn’t instal you until later.”

“It's a kilt, dumbass. It's only a skirt if I'm wearing underwear.”

“The smile on her face was almost Dante's. Tears pricked his eyes, then hers, while all those impossible things passed between them. While the truth was sending down roots and throwing out branches until it filled the silent room with impossible blossoms.I love him.”

“Dante chuckled low. "There's my blush."”

“People need space; families need air; love needs light. Like Mrs. Anastagio always said, ―You need enough rooms to love someone properly.”

“For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back.”

“Everything was so nutty with Loretta, all her reactions. She used tantrums like most people used sedatives”

“A man is just a life support system for assumptions.”

“Love hurts.Think back over romance novels you’ve loved or the genre-defining books that drive our industry. The most unforgettable stories and characters spring from crushing opposition. What we remember about romance novels is the darkness that drives them. Three hundred pages of folks being happy together makes for a hefty sleeping pill, but three hundred pages of a couple finding a way to be happy in the face of impossible odds makes our hearts soar. In darkness, we are all alone.So don’t just make love, make anguish for your characters. As you structure a story, don’t satisfy your hero’s desires, thwart them. Make sure your solutions create new problems. Nurture your characters doubts and despair. Make them earn the happy ending they want, even better…make them deserve it. Delay and disappointment charge situations and validate character growth. Misery accompanies love. It’s no accident that many of the stories we think of as timeless romances in Western Literature are fiercely tragic: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Cupid and Psyche… the pain in them drags us back again and again, hoping that this time we’ll find a way out of the dark.Only if you let your characters get lost will we get lost in them. And that, more than anything else, is what romance can and should do for its protagonists and its readers: lead us through the labyrinth, skirt the monstrous despair roaming its halls, and find our way into daylight.”

“The world is different, but folks are the same, huh?”

“Gotten butt-ass, bone-dog naked for your vadge-cam?" Dante offered with an angelic smile, standing close."Fucking hell, D." Griff turned to Beth with an apology, but she spoke first."Huh-yeah. Thanks, cockbreath.”

“I'll take Classic 69 and semen-swapping for $300”

“Griff's pretty neat on his own. Scottish hedge!”

“If your heart is broken, do you have a phantom heart?”

“Your life needs an airbag. I swear, Anastagio, you should have come equipped when you were born.”

“You tell him for me: if he fucks with you, if he lays one Russian knuckle on you, your buddy is coming after him and someone's gonna need a screen door to fish out the pieces.”

“No. Look, the mutual tug paid extra.” Dante mimed jerking and squirting without looking embarrassed, which only made Griff more embarrassed. “And thestuff you did at the end bumped our fee even—”“I know, man. Sorry about—”“—more. Bullshit, sorry! Blowing your jazz on me got us a three hundred dollar bonus. Didja know that?” Dante rolled his eyes and waved away the worry.“Dude, if I could get a fee every time you squirted on me, I’d camp under your bed and have you doing it three times a day.”Help me, Jesus.Griff’s eyes honest-to-God bugged at that.”

“Trust this: drinking until you go away from the world only wastes moments of your life. All that time is lost. And time and love are incredibly precious. Yes? Don't waste either.”

“Two men, two friends curled in bed. The next few minutes would decide everything.”

“Griff groaned and covered Dante's loose mouth with his own, driving his tongue in to steal the stars from his eyes, the fire from his mind.”

“Somewhere high overhead on the other side of the freighter, metal ground against metal making a sound like angry mechanical whales fucking.”

“Because people should not be punished for loving and hoping and holding their hearts open.”

“Watching his cofarmer return to the cove, Runt had the strangest sensation: a kind of foreknowing, as if he and Ox were immortal and ancient in this alien place.”

“[...]Are both of you...?""Manscaped?" Dante smiled. "I'm fucking Italian; I been mowing my lawn since I was thirteen.”

“It was the list of activities thing. Like the menu with price, only I'm not the restaurant; I'm the meal.”

“I want you to move in with me, man.""Nah. I appreciate it, but I need to get a place of my own. I'm a grownup.”

“So damn jealous! Like I can see anyone but you.”