The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

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.

When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

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