The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.

He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.