Ignacio

“Name one hero who was happy."
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Take anything you want and know you deserve to have it.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from."

"But what if he is your friend? Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?"

"You ask a question that philosophers argue over. He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?"

We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.

He is half my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.

I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Agamemnon posted guards to watch Troy every hour of every day. We were all waiting for something - an attack, or an embassy, or a demonstration of power. But Troy kept her gates shut, and so the raids continued. I learned to sleep through the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I wanted to be able to listen, to disgest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posteriry. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles