The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen.

We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

Envious Death would drink his blood, and grow young again.

a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.