He didn’t marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.
If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me.
I am not sure I trust you.””You can trust me with your life, My King.””But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back.
I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy.
I think a good book is a good book forever.I don’t think they get less good because times change.
The Attolians liked to point out with a snicker that there was no sign anywhere of the king’s hand at work.
These people make my family look easy to get along with.
Sometimes, if you want to change a man’s mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.
It isn’t an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don’t know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.
Oh, Lady,” said the woodcutter, “my hurt is overwhelming because it is someone else’s pain that makes me cry.
But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.
… I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one.
No friend had I made there, but I wasn’t with this group to make friends, and besides, he sneered too much. I’ve found that people who sneer are almost always sneering at me.
Are you telling me in your own gentle way to stop whining?””Yes.””I don’t feel like a hero. I feel like an idiot.””I think heroes generally do, but those men believe in you.””I did wait until I was outside before I threw up.
He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he’d lie then, too.
He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn’t ever quit.
All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.
No man can choose to serve only himself when he has something to offer his state. No one can put his own wishes above the needs of so many.
I know that if you don’t look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won’t find one.
That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in a temple.
Were you lying?””I never lie,” he said piously. “About what?””The sand, the snake.”For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.