All interesting heroes have an Achilles’ heel.

It will make you powerful. But it will also make you weak. Your prowess in combat will be beyond any mortal’s, but your weaknesses, your failings will increase as well.”You mean I’ll have a bad...

Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.

The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.

I have done it,” she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S,...

He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.

Primary Epic is great, but not with the greatness of the later kind. In Homer, its greatness lies in the human and personal tragedy built up against this background of meaningless flux. It is all...

Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains...

Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free.

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he...

I wish he had let you all die.

I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, ‘To my beloved Hector,’ and I thought, by God she’s cheating on me, and...

Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.

One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one...

When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.

Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for...

Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.

Achilles too staggered a moment. He felt his soul change colour. Blood pooled at his feet, and though he continued to stand upright and triumphant in the sun, his spirit set off on its own...

Besides,” said Suriyawong. “This was not a rescue operation.””What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?””An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon,” said Suriyawong. “And the loan of a knife.”Achilles held up...