Quotes from Madeline Miller

I waited beside my son, but he scarcely knew it. His eyes had found the horizon, that seam of waves and sky.

i had never thought of having children, but looking at him, for a moment i could imagine it

Monsters are a boon to gods. Imagine all the prayers.

Hermes was watching me, his head cocked like a curious bird. He was waiting for my reaction. Would I be skimmed milk for crying, or a harpy with a heart of stone? There was nothing between. Anything else did not fit cleanly in the laughing tale he wanted to spin of it.

The second spell I cast beneath it. It was an enchantment woven into the island itself, every bird and beast and grain of sand, every leaf and rock and drop of water. I marked them, and all the generations in their bellies, with Telegonus' name. If ever she did break through that smoke, the island would rise up in his defence, the beasts and birds, the branches and rocks, the roots in the earth.

I failed him, yet he is a sweet wonder of this world.

She was a goddess of torment and understood the eloquence of violence.

So that is what I must hope for then? That one day I will see my father in the underworld and he will be sorry?" It is better than some of us get. But I held my peace. He had a right to his anger, and it was not my place to try to take it.

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 mountain to be climbed anew. All I could carry with me from last time was the knowledge that it could be done.

They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs. In my chair by the hearth, I lifted my cup. "Sometimes," I told him, "you must be content with ignorance.

They take what they want, and in return they give you only your own shackles.

Yet Hector eludes him, weaving through the chariots and men with the luck of the gods. No one calls it cowardice that he runs. He will not live if he is caught. He is wearing Achilles' own armor, the unmistakable phoenix breastplate taken from beside my corpse. The men stare as the two pass; it looks, almost, as if Achilles is chasing himself.

Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.

She brought the whole urgent universe wherever she went, portents and angry deities and a thousand looming perils.

I will not be silenced on my own island.

Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed.

I would wake, choking on my horror, and stare at the darkness until dawn.

Will I feel his ashes as they fall against mine?

You cannot make that promise, I wanted to shout. You know nothing. But whose fault was that? I had kept the face of the world veiled from him. I had painted his history in bright, bold colors, and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it. If I was so old, I should be wise. I should know better than to howl when the bird was already flown.

A look passed across her face. I might have called it rage, if it were not pointed so inward.

He was one of the greatest of our kind, and the drops that fell from him were golden, smearing his back with a terrible beauty.

I did not mind the emptiness either. For a thousand years I had tried to fill the space between myself and my family

It is done. I will think of them no more. I cast them out and I am finished.

I covered myself with my hands and made soft noises like a child. Blush, blush, I prayed. Blush for him, or he will kill you. And I was fortunate, for it was warm in the room, and I was angry, and ashamed too,