“It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright were they dull.”

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

“and when he moved it was like watching oil spread across a lake, smooth and fluid, almost vicious”

“Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother's lyre. He had brought it with him.'I wish I had known,' I said, the first day when he showed it to me. 'I almost did not come, because I did not want to believe it.'He smiled. 'Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.”

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

“I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.”

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”