Quotes from Madeline Miller

But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.

Are you frightened?" I asked. The first call of a nightingale in the trees at our backs. "No," he answered. "This is what I was born for.

It was like a great chain of fear, I thought. Zeus at the top and my father just behind. Then Zeus' siblings and children, then my uncles, and on down through all the ranks of river-gods and brine-lords and Furies and Winds and Graces, until it came to the bottom where we sat, nymphs and mortals both, each eyeing the other.

I sifted and resifted my memories of Aeëtes, all those hours we had leaned against each other. That old sickening feeling returned: that every moment of my life I had been a fool.

Most gods and mortals have lives that are tied to nothing; they tangle and wend now here, now there, according to no set plan. But then there are those who wear their destinies like nooses, whose lives run straight as planks, however they try to twist. It is these that our prophets may see.

The beach ebbed and flowed, its curves changing with every winter season. Even the cliffs were different, carved by the rain and wind, by the claws of countless scrabbling lizards, by the seeds that stuck and sprouted in their cracks. Everything was united by the steady rise and fall of nature's breath. Everything except for me.

My ambivalence, of course, only encouraged him. Any challenge was a game, and any game a pleasure. If I had loved him, he would have been gone, yet my revulsion brought him back and back. He

Are you sorry?'' ''I am not.'' The answer was sure, immediate. ''I am not either.'' I could never be sorry about this, I could never regret you. I never wish to be parted from you, ever. For all my life and beyond to the end of all the world, I will never be parted from your side again.

Children of gods always came to their strength faster than mortals. He would miss them when they were gone, I knew. But I would find something else for him. I would help him forget. I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.

Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you." "I doubt it.

It turned out that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.

One morning, I woke to find Chiron gone. This was not unusual. He often rose before we did, to milk the goats or pick fruits for breakfast. I left the cave so that Achilles

That's the stone," I said, "like I told you. It can't get warm without sun. Haven't you ever touched a statue?

However I pretended I could conceal my thoughts as well as he, I knew it was not true. He would see down to my bones. He would gather my weaknesses up and set them with the rest of his collection, alongside Achilles' and Ajax's. He kept them on his person as other men keep their knives.

You will pardon me if I do not rejoice at being one in a long line of villains.

I did not pretend to be a mortal. I showed my lambent, yellow eyes at every turn. None of it made a difference. I was alone and a woman, that was all that mattered.

You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows that is in me? Will you find out?

Name one hero who was happy. You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward. He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret. I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it." "Why me?" "Because you're the reason. Swear it." "I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. "I swear it," he echoed. We sat like that for a moment, hands touching. He grinned. "I feel like I could eat the world raw.

A pain was gnawing in my chest. I pressed my hands to it, the hollows and hard bones. I sat before my loom and felt at last like the creature Medea had named me: old and abandoned and alone, spiritless and gray as the rocks themselves.

I did nothing to prepare. If I was not ready now, when would I be? I did not even walk up to the peak. He could come here, upon my yellow sands, and face me where I stood. "Father", I said, into the air, "I would speak with you.

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

Oceanos' palace was a great wonder, set deep in the earth's rock. Its high-arched halls were gilded, the stone floors smoothed by centuries of divine feet. Through every room ran the faint sound of Oceanos' river, source of the world's fresh waters, so dark you could not tell where it ended and the rock-bed began. On its banks grew grass and soft gray flowers,

Patroclus. I have given enough to them. I will not give them this.

Less than a month we had spent together, yet he seemed to know me better than anyone who had ever walked the world.