The Tower of Nero

"Apollo will fall, but Apollo must rise again."

"Apollo will fall, but Apollo must rise again."

"I won't hide, I won't cower. That's not who I will be."

"To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something."

"I'll make things right. Or I will die trying."

"You'll come back?" she asked.
"Always," I promised. "The sun always comes back."

“I considered that perhaps courage was a self-perpetuating cycle, like abuse […] All any of us could do was try, and hope that, in the end the virtuous cycle would break the vicious one.”

“I considered that perhaps courage was a self-perpetuating cycle, like abuse […] All any of us could do was try, and hope that, in the end the virtuous cycle would break the vicious one.”

“When he’d told me to remember being human, he’d meant building on pain and tragedy, overcoming it, learning from it […] To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.”

“And yet, along with humility, I’d learned something else: getting humiliated is only the beginning, not the end. Sometimes you need a second shot, and a third, and a fourth.”

“I had learned, all right. I was still learning.”

“She said nothing. Her stance radiated stubbornness. I imagined her putting down her own roots, mooring herself in place.”

“No story ever ends, does it? It just leads into others.”

“I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.”