Beware the Greeks when they bear gifts. - Colleen McCullough

..the best is only bought at the cost of great pain...or so says the legend

Why shouldn't the living cords which lace our being together flick softly against a loved one in the very moment of their unraveling?...Sometimes, all the miles between are as nothing, sometimes, they are narrowed to the little silence between the beats of a heart.

They didn’t like company in grief; they preferred to be alone with their pain.