• p. 5

a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs

• p. 23, 24

'i like homer,' i said weakly. / he regarded me with chill distaste. 'i love homer,' he said.

• p. 40

her voice in greek was harsh and low and lovely. / thus he died, and all life struggled out of him; and as he died he spattered me with the dark red and violent-driven rain of bitter-savored blood to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers of god in glory at the birthtime of the buds

• p. 41

'death is the mother of beauty,' said henry. / 'and what is beauty?' / 'terror.'

• p.43

'we don't like to admit it,' said julian, 'but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything.'

• p. 45

beauty is terror. whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

• p. 107

the mere sight of her sparked an almost infinite range of fantasy, from greek to gothic, from vulgar to divine.

• p. 233

'[...] the descriptions of troy in the iliad are horrible to me – all flat land and burning sun. no. i've always been drawn to broken, wild terrain. the oddest tongues come from such places, and the strangest mythologies, and the oldest cities, and the most barbarous religions – pan himself was born in the mountains, you know. and Zeus. in parrhasia it was that rheia bore thee,' he said dreamily, lapsing into greek, ' where was a hill sheltered with the thickest brush...'

• p. 312

some things are too terrible to grasp at once. other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. it is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself – quite to one's surprise – in an entirely different world.

• p. 339

'but how,' said charles, who was close to tears, 'how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?' / henry lit a cigarette. 'i prefer to think of it,' he had said, 'as redistribution of matter.'

• p. 356

what i did experience when alone was a sort of general neurotic horror, a common attack of nerves and self-loathing magnified to the power of ten.

• p. 365

he refused to see anything about any of us except our most engaging qualities which he cultivated and magnified to the exclusion of all our tedious and less desirable ones.

• p. 433

there was no signature, but instead a tag from the iliad, in greek. it was from the eleventh book, when odysseus, cut off from his friends, finds himself alone and on enemy territory: / be strong, saith my heart; i am a soldier; / i have seen worse sights than this.

• p. 485

'and now,' said julian, when everything was quiet, 'i hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?'

• p. 511

not a brotherly kiss, there was no mistaking it for that, but a long, slow, greedy kiss, messy and voluptuous.

• p. 549

(why so pale and wan, fond lover?)

• p. 605

to my surprise, he smiled at her. 'you think i'd hurt you?'

• p. 629

'are you happy here?' i said at last. / he considered this for a moment. 'not particularly,' he said. 'but you're not very happy where you are, either.'