the song of achilles ... sentence starters
"I wish he had let you all die."
"Will you tell me who hurt you?"
"Name one hero who was happy."
"Kill me. It will not bring him back."
"I cannot bear to see you grieving."
"I feel like I could eat the world raw."
"Your honor could be darkened by it."
"He is half of my soul, as the poets say."
"He was always better with words than I."
"He smiled, and his face was like the sun."
"You care more for him in death than in life."
"There is no honor in betraying your friends."
"I am air, and thought, and can do nothing…"
"If you have to go, you know I will go with you."
"Pride became us... heroes were never modest."
"Strange that such a small kindness felt like grace."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy."
"You ask a question that philosophers argue over…"
"Do you think you are the only one who loved him?"
"They are fools if they let my glory rise or fall on this."
"Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free."
"So many moments of happiness, crowding forward."
"Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost."
"But how is there glory in taking life? We die so easily."
"I have no need to forgive you. You cannot offend me."
"I have given enough to them. I will not give them this."
"Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods..."
"If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have."
"I am almost finished. He does not deserve to lie in filth."
"Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating."
"I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it."
"You have killed him and taken your vengeance. It is enough."
"There was nothing clever to say, so I said something foolish."
"How could you have let him go? You knew he could not fight!"
"Nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity."
"The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin."
"I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong."
"I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me."
"I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest."
"Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you."
"When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together."
"There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw."
"When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him."
"But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade."
"And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone."
"And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom."
"You have never deserved him. I do not know why he ever loved you. You care only for yourself!"
"It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after."
"We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other."
"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."
"He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?"
"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."