The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

“There is no law that gods must be fair,

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.

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.

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”