Quotes from Madeline Miller

As it turned out, I did kill pigs that night after all.

The poets were always correct,'' I say softly. ''You are half my soul.

That's the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief.

I come to say that you may go, and I will help you. But there must be conditions." Did he know how much those words cost me? I do not think he could. It is youth's gift not to feel its debts.

Divine blood purified our muddy race, bred heroes from dust and clay.

and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.

At least, I thought in those early days, once I cast a spell, I would not have to learn it again. But even that was not true. However often I had used an herb before, each cutting had its own character. One rose would give up its secrets if it were ground, another must be pressed, a third steeped. Each spell was a montain to be climbed anew. All I could carry with me from last time was the knowedge that it could be done.

I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread:

For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough. I

I had a wild thought there, beneath that sky. I will eat these herbs. Then whatever is truly in me, let it be out, at last. I brought them to my mouth. But my courage failed. What was I truly? In the end, I could not bear to know.

Because you're the reason. Swear it.

An ugly man, with a face sharp like a weasel and a habit of running a flickering tongue over his lips before he speaks. But most ugly of all are his eyes: blue, bright blue. When people see them, they flinch. Such things are freakish. He is lucky he was not killed at birth.

I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

Odysseus drew the world to him," she said. "Telegonus runs after, shaping as he goes, like a river carving a channel.

It was our weakness that drew the war out, not her strength.

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

The door closed, and the room swelled around me like a bruise. When she was here, I could pretend it felt small because of her, but when she left the four wood walls seemed to press towards me, like lungs that had breathed in.

He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.

You are a better man than I.

It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks? But a cracked heart was not enough, and I had grown wise enough to know it. I kissed him and left him there.

named me Hawk, Circe, for my yellow eyes, and the strange, thin sound of my crying.

True is what men believe, and they believe this of you.

Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.' - Chiron

Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.