Quotes from Madeline Miller

courage is not a matter of age, but true-made spirits.

I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me.

I was a golden witch, who had no past at all.

all the grace I saw then was his own: simple, unadorned, glorious.

He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms.

I learned to sleep during the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.

All those years I had spent with them were like a stone tossed in a pool. Already, the ripples were gone.

Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.

I could have told him more, of the dreams that left me bleary and bloodshot, the almost-screams that scraped my throat as I swallowed them down. The way the stars turned and turned through the night above my unsleeping eyes.

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.

The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine.

Some walked hand in hand with those they had loved in life; some waited, secure that one day their beloved would come. And for those who had not loved, whose lives had been filled with pain and horror, there was the black river Lethe, where one might drink and forget. Some consolation.

Success in such a war as this comes only through men sewn to a single purpose, funnelled to a single spear thrust rather than a thousand needle-pricks.

I drew my divinity up, cold and bracing around me, and went to open the door.

I never claimed to be good.

I had walked the earth for a hundred generations, yet I was still a child to myself.

Maybe her gods are kinder than ours, and she will find rest. I would give my life again to make it so

It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came.

Everyone looked at me, because I was the most beautiful woman in the town. I don't say this to boast, because there is nothing in it to boast of. It was nothing I did myself.

He had no chance, really. He was only flesh.

There had never been a sweeter child. He smelled like honey and just-kindled flames. ...Every moment he was with me, I felt a rushing in my throat, which was my love for him, so great sometimes I could not speak.

If good Patroclus had been there he might have said, Sir, you are no true hero, no Heracles, no Jason. You speak no honest speeches from pure heart. You do no noble deeds in the gleaming sunlight. But I had met Jason. And I knew what sort of deeds could be done in the sun's sight. I said nothing.

They did not see me as their dinner. They were pious men, honestly lost, and I would feed them, and if there was a handsome one amongst them, I might take him to my bed. It was not desire, not even its barest scrapings. It was a sort of rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own.

In grief, men must help each other, though they are enemies.