Ovid's The Metamorphoses has provided quite a bit of good reading in relation to the novel I'm writing. A brief description of the novel in Ovid's tonuge:

"I swear by all the rivers
Of deepest Hell my best is done to conquer
Human Ill: the best is not enough; taint
Must be cut from flesh as with a cleansing
Knife the body cured."
(Book I, Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron)

Her words in tears: "How can I desecrate
My mother's spirit? O forgive me, Goddess."
(Book I, Deucalion and Pyrrha)

"One day - and that was very long ago -
We lived within the womb of our first mother,
And we were scarcely more than hopes of men,
Seeds of the first beginning, till Nature's hands
(How artfully she worked to suit her purpose!)
Gave us our destiny to live beyond
distending walls which held us coiled in darkness,
So from that home we fell to worldy being.
...
Time wears away the engery, the vigour
Of earlier years within the wasting body."

And the most important one...

"Nothing retains the shape of what it was,
And Nature, always making old things new,
Proves nothing dies within the universe,
But takes another being in new forms.
What is called birth is change from what we were,
And death the shape of being left behind.
Though all things melt or grow from here to there,
Yet the same balance of the world remains."
(Book XV, The Philosopher)