He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

A part of what makes myths live is their multiplicity, the way different voices retell them in every generation. Homer survives because his poetry was outstanding, yes, but also because he's been passed down by so many by luminaries like Vergil and Ovid, Shakespeare, James Joyce and Margaret Atwood, but also by countless others. I wanted to do my part for these tremendous stories.

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.

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

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).

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

and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.