"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 ou..."
- Megan Whalen Turner
"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,..."
"Ambiades, I realized, was the kind of person who liked to put people in a hierarchy, and he wanted me to understand that I was at the bottom of his. He was supposed to treat me politely in spite of my..."
"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."
"I am a master of foolhardy plans."