Quotes from Madeline Miller

No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.

He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed.

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.

and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. "Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I.

He smiled, and his face was like the sun.

That is — your friend?" "Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.

There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.

He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.

This, I say. This and this. The way his hair looked in summer sun. His face when he ran. His eyes, solemn as an owl at lessons. This and this and this. So many moments of happiness, crowding forward.

I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.

You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

I feel like I could eat the world raw.

Odysseus inclines his head. "True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another." He spread his broad hands. "We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?" He smiles. "Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself. "You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure to not dishonor me." "I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.