The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

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?

There was something in Chiron’s face, firm and calm and imbued with authority, that made us children again, with no world beyond this moment’s play and this night’s dinner. With him near us, it was hard to remember what might have happened on the day by the beach. Even our bodies felt smaller beside the centaur’s bulk. How had we thought we were grown?

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

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.

“If every soldier killed only those who’d personally offended him, Pelides, we’d have no wars at all.”

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