Madeline Miller

Name one hero who was happy.”

“I can’t.”

“I know. They never let you be famous and happy.”

It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

In this last memory, I am skipping stones for her, plink, plink, plink, across the skin of the sea. She seems to like the way the ripples look, dispersing back to glass. Or perhaps it is the sea itself she likes.

The voices of the dead were said to have the power to make the living mad. I must not hear him speak.

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

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.

For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.