136 Quotes About Achilles

My fears forgotten in the golden harbour of his arms.

No one would remember his glory, or his honesty, or his beauty; all his gold would be turned to ashes and ruin.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind any more, that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. 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.

(You understood their words)but they never reached the heartburied in your chest.

So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men live on to bear such torments - the gods live free of sorrows.-Achilles to Priam

Yet Hector eludes him, weaving through the chariots and men with the luck of the gods. No one calls it cowardice that he runs. He will not live if he is caught. He is wearing Achilles' own armor, the unmistakable phoenix breastplate taken from beside my corpse. The men stare as the two pass; it looks, almost, as if Achilles is chasing himself.

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all.

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.

The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.