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121 " 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. "
― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles
122 " I would know him in death, at the end of the world. "
123 " I am air and thought and can do nothing. "
124 " Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me? "
125 " The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him. "
126 " He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important? "
127 " I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it."He smiled. "Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere."The sun sank below Pelion's ridges, and we were happy. "
128 " I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost. "
129 " I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do. "
130 " A surety rose in me, lodged in my throat. I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. "
131 " Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. 'If you have to go, you know I will go with you.' We slept. "
132 " I think: this is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: how long do we have? "
133 " He collects my ashes himself, though this is a women's duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks.'When I am dead, I charged you to mingle our ashes and bury us together. "
134 " As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun. "
135 " Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat. "
136 " The greater the monument, the greater the man. The stone the Greeks quarry for his grave is huge and white, stretching up to the sky. A C H I L L E S, it reads. It will stand for him, and speak to all who pass: he lived and died, and lives again in memory. "
137 " 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. "
138 " . . .nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity. "
139 " And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. 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 where they were dull. "
140 " This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter. "