“I take it you do not agree with your countrymen’s religious practices.’‘Oh no,’ said Hippothous. ‘I am not Cilician by birth. Mine has been a long and tragic path. I was born in Perinthus, the noble city close by Byzantium. My father was on the Boule. When I was young, I fell desperately in love. Hyperanthes was nearly my age. Stripped for wrestling in the gymnasium, he was like a god. And his eyes – no sidelong glances or fearsome looks, no trace of villainy or dissembling.’As they ate, Hippothous told them a tale of love, lust, subterfuge, murder, flight, shipwreck, loss and exile – a tale worthy of a Greek romance. ‘Probably from a fucking Greek romance,’ muttered Calgacus.”

“Maximus was cleaning his blade on the dead man’s wolfskin. ‘You promised him his life,’ the Greek said. ‘No, I said death was his last worry.’ Maximus swung up on to Pale Horse. ‘Is that not so for all of us?”

“Nie rozumiesz. Każda religia, która nakazuje wyznawcom kochać odległego, zapewne wymyślonego boga bardziej od tych, których powinni kochać, rodziny, przyjaciół, a przede wszystkim dzieci, jest okrutna i nieludzka. Więc jak widzisz, nie sądzę, żebym należał do ludzi, których można nawrócić na wiarę w waszego ukrzyżowanego boga.”

“We’re your friends. Your shit became our shit when you drank my tequila and stripped down to your bra. Boss, Shocking Heaven”

“Until the blood from my pen runs dry, I shall worship the Greek body, the Greek mind, and the Greek soul.Until my tears land upon Greek soil, I shall forever live in exile.”

“He laughs and turns up the music so that I can hear it in the back. The speakers blast out: ‘Streets like a jungle, so call the police.’‘Call the police,’ I smile, ‘fuck the police’ nodding my head to the beat. The guard turns it up even more.‘Yeah, fuck the police for stitching me up and presenting their dodgy evidence,’ I think to myself. Fuck them for getting me put away for seven instead of the four or five I should have got.A new song comes on and I’m merrily tapping my feet while the guard sings along up front to The Clash. ‘Fighting the nation. Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah…Oh yeah! Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition. Police and thieves in the street. Oh yeah. Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition’.Ha ha. The DJ on the radio is on my side. The Securicor men are on my side. And I’m heading back to civilisation and as many drugs as I can get my hands on. Everything’s going my way. There must be a song about that, too.”

“I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.”