The very dull truth is that writing love scenes is the same as writing other scenes - your job is to be fully engaged in the character's experience. What does this mean to them? How are they changed by it, or not? I remember being a little nervous, as I am when writing any high-stakes, intense scene (death, sex, grief, joy).

I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.

We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

I would still be with you. But I could sleep outside, so it would not be so obvious. I do not need to attend your councils. I—' 'No. The Phthians will not care. And the others can talk all they like. I will still be Aristos Achaion.' Best of the Greeks. 'Your honor could be darkened by it." 'Then it is darkened.' His jaw shot forward, stubborn. 'They are fools if they let my glory rise or fall on this.

She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. “Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.