I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

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?

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.

She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

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.

and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

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

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.

Today the greatest single source of wealth is between your ears.

It's not like we did something wrong. We just burned down the church while the choir within sang religious songs.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'.

I am not a great prose stylist. I'm a storyteller. There are thousands of people who don't like what I do. Fortunately, there are millions who do.

Even when I was playing, I never thought much about the individual honors. I wanted to go to the Super Bowl.

Manuscripts do not burn.

If you give me wings I will soar for you Even if this whole land Sinks down to the water If you give me a sword I will fight for you Even if this whole sky Shoots through with your light

I didn't want to be greedy. It's a mark of bad character and I always believed that pigs go the slaughterhouse.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.