Quotes from Madeline Miller

The earth seemed to echo where I walked. Above me the sky stretched out its empty hands.

All heroes are fools, he liked to say. What he meant was, all heroes but me.

And you think that no one but me can kill Hector.' 'Yes.' I said. 'And you think to steal time from the Fates?' 'Yes.' 'Ah.' A sly smile spread across his face; he had always loved defiance. 'Well, why should I kill him? He's done nothing to me.' For the first time then, I felt a kind of hope.

Living with him was like standing beside the sea. Each day a different color, a different foam-capped height, but always the same restless intensity pulling towards the horizon.

No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles had asked him, ... [o]r your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?" "You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. "He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

Her voice was matter-of-fact. Loyal, songs called her later. Faithful and true and prudent. Such passive, pale words for what she was.

My divinity shines in me like the last days of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead, and can hold nothing in their hands.

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.

But I say this so that you understand what I was up against: that I was worth more to her sick than I was well.

Circe," Apollo said, and it was the greatest chime of all. Every melody in the world belonged to him.

O goddess, if this is a dream, let me still sleep.

I clap my hands over my ears. The voices of the dead were said to have the power to make the living mad. I must not hear him speak.

that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

Some things are worth spilling blood for.

Father, are we late enough to kill astronomers?

How do you bear it?" he said. My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face, It was a surprise to realise that he was waiting for an answer. I believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus' words deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. "We bear it as best we can," I said.

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung.

Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

It was easy, in those moments, to forget that the war had not yet really begun.

the floor was always clean, the tables gleaming. The ashes vanished from the fireplace, the dishes washed themselves, and the firewood regrew overnight. In the pantry there were jars of oil and wine, bowls of cheese and barley-grain, always fresh and full.

Will you teach it to me?" "Sorcery cannot be taught. You find it yourself, or you do not.

Rage and grief, thwarted desire, lust, self-pity: these are emotions gods know well. But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.

Two children he had had, and he had not seen either clearly. But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.