“I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground.”

“In his youth, he was electrified. The stars were moving in his bloodstream. He would not have been cowed by the customs of an earthly monarch. When he loved, it was with a heat and a desperation that he carried like a sword. He loved in the way that Greeks burned cities.”

“Goodbye," she said.When I didn't say it back, she rested her hand on the top of my head. The weight was strange and gentle. "I love you," she said. "And when I tell you goodbye, I don't mean forever or for long. Just that I'm going home now, and so are you.”

“Suddenly, I understand what Petra has always been trying to tell me. The whole time she was mumbling her litany of stories, she was always only telling me one thing. Love is when you care more about something else than you do about yourself.”

“The new mythology of love was that it bent to the fashion of the day, obligated to take the shape of doves, lilies, jewels. This is a lie. Love is sometimes as passionate as war.”

“Lillian laughs and rolls her eyes. “Do I look like I know the answer to that? I always just locked on to the target and then followed it all the way down.”

“What's up?' he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and bring a shovel.”