Amar significa nunca tener que decir lo siento.

I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me – to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like, when I woke up in the morning and Jenny was there. Still there. I’m sorry, embarrassed even, but I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to.

It scarcely made a column of newspaper space, but it wrote headlines in their lives.

Although champagne was served, the mood was curiously subdued. After this reunion, they would probably never meet together as a class again – at least not in such numbers. They would spend the next decades reading obituaries of the men who had started out in 1954 as rivals and today were leaving Harvard as brothers. This was the beginning of the end. They had met once more and just had time enough to learn that they liked one another. And to say goodbye.

They glanced at one another like tigers taking measure of a menacing new rival. But in this kind of jungle you could never be sure where the real danger lurked.

This isn’t a watercolor, it’s a mural.

Professors of classics – not even a professor of English – professors of classics, they’re something sacred; it’s almost like being a priest.

Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness.

Something may have been lost in translation, but it certainly wasn’t love.

Quiet heroism or youthful idealism, or both? What do we know? That life without heroism and idealism is not worth living – or that either can be fatal?