I don't know what more there is to say, except this: that since one can't refuse to know oneself, and it must have happened eventually, I would rathe… - Mary Renault

Oh, yes. I thought the god had more left for me to do; but one must be ready.” He touched my hand; his thanks had been wordless, but none the worse for that. “One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.” I answered, “That is the life of the gods, who only seem to die, like the sun at his setting. But do not ride too fast across the sky, and leave us all in darkness.” “One thing,” he said, “I’ve taken to heart from this. The water in the plains is poison. Do as I mean to do, and stick to wine.

In seven years, thought Laurie, every cell in one's body has been replaced, even our memories live in a new brain. That is not the face I saw, and these are not the eyes I saw with. Even our selves are not the same, but only a consequence of the selves we had then. Yet I was there and I am here; and this man, who is sometimes what I remember and sometimes a stranger I met at a party the other day, is also to himself the I who was there: his mind in its different skull has travelled back to a place his living feet never visited; and the pain he felt then he can feel again.

The twilight struck chilly as he went outside. He experienced for the first time that special dread brought by the first touch of winter to lovers who have nowhere to meet except out of doors.