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

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.

I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

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.

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do.

What's amazing to me is how many of the issues facing women in the ancient world still linger today. Take Odysseus' wife, Penelope, a brilliant, resourceful woman who ends up in a terrible situation: in her husband's absence, she is being held hostage in her own home by men who claim to be courting her. She tries to make them leave, but because she's a woman they refuse, blaming their bad behavior on her desirability.