Jess

“I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles