Sofia

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

“But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?”

“You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”

We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.

I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Books, too, had hearts, though they were not the same as people's, and a book's heart could be broken: she had seen it happen before. Grimoires that refused to open, their voices gone silent, or whose ink faded and bled across the pages like tears.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“I love you, too," she said.

Nathaniel's brow furrowed. He turned his face to the side and blinks several times.

"Thank God," he said finally. "I don't think unrequited love would have suited me. I might have started writing poetry.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“I'm ruining your reputation, aren't I?" she asked, watching the spectacle unfold.

"Don't worry," Nathaniel said. "I've been hard at work trying to ruin my reputation for years. Perhaps after this, influential families will stop trying to catapult their unwed daughters over my garden fence. Which actually did happen once. I had to fend her off with a trowel.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns