“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.”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“The ground around him began to bleed.”

“There was a quality to the silence like a held breath.”

“I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room, loving him in silence.”

“It turned out that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.”

“No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

“The numbness now is merciful. A last few moments of it. Then, the fall.”

“Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood, like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.”