Quotes from Madeline Miller

The beginning of hope. We have given each other wounds, but they are not mortal.

May I give you some advice? If you are truly his friend, you will help him leave this soft heart behind. He's going to Troy to kill men, not rescue them." His dark eyes held me like swift-running current. "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 of how many nights I had lain awake in this room, loving him in silence

It was spring, and we were surrounded by the profusion of Anatolian fertility. For three weeks the earth would paint herself in every color, burst every bud, unfurl each rioting petal. Then, the wild flush of her excitement spent, she would settle down to the steady work of summer. It was my favorite time of year.

My uncles rubbed their hands and smiled back. They went away, bent over their hopes, thinking what they could not wait to do when Titans ruled again. It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

Aquiles sonríe cuando su rostro cae sobre la tierra.

I touched the thought like a bruise, testing its ache.

The never ending ache of love and sorrow

After that, I was craftier with my observation, kept my head down and my eyes ready to leap away. But he was craftier still. At least once a dinner he would turn and catch me before I could feign indifference. Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moments in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.

I haunt their dreams. Do not leave, I beg them. Not until you have given me peace. But if anyone hears, they do not answer.

It was easy to see how such lovely things might become songs.

Daedalus had said to me once: Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. Orpheus' voice made the trees weep, Heracles could kill a man by clapping him on the back. Achilles' miracle was his speed.

But a monster," he said, "she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either. So whatever foolish sorrow you harbor, forget it. I think it may be said that you improved her.

Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart? O

whatever tears might have been in me for that lost dream had been parched away.

We gods eat as we sleep: because it is one of life's great pleasures, not because we have to.

HER FINGERS RAN LIGHTLY over the beams, stroked the threads of the weft like a stable master greeting a prize horse. She asked no questions; she seemed to absorb the loom's workings by touch alone.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it.

Her calmness enraged me.

I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it as soldiers face their enemies, girded and braced, sword up against the coming blows. Yet all my preparations were not enough.

but there was no wound she could give me that i had nit already given myself

Mother? Can you not be happy for me?" No, I wanted to shout at him. No, I cannot. Why must I be happy? Is it not enough that I let you go?

I was a gray space filled up with nothing. What could I say? One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.