“To hate excellence is to hate the gods.”

“He kept telling me I was queer, and I didn't like it. The word, I mean. Shutting you away, somehow; roping you off with a lot of people you don't feel much in common with, half of whom hate the other half anyway, and just keep together so that they can lean up against each other for support.”

“Hephaistion had known for many ages that if a god should offer him one gift in all his lifetime, he would choose this. Joy hit him like a lightning-bolt.”

“The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.”

“I was a king and a king's heir and now I am a slave.”

“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.”

“One might have supposed that the true act of love was to lie together and talk.”