Quotes from Madeline Miller

Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

Odysseus, son of Laertes, the great traveler, prince of wiles and tricks and a thousand ways. He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.

Aucun homme ne vaut plus qu'un autre, d'où qu'il vienne

The spiral shell. Always another curve out of sight.

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

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 moment in my day that I felt anything at all.

He landed, and the weapons were already lifted, held with a deadly poise that was like no girl, nor no man either. The greatest warrior of his generation.

I had painted his history in bright, bold colours and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it.

I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyacinths we had walked through, their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to.

Pharmakeia, such arts are called, for they deal in pharmaka, those herbs with the power to work changes upon the world, both those sprung from the blood of gods, as well as those which grow common upon the earth. It is a gift to be able to draw out their powers, and I am not alone in possessing

and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.

He talked so often of longing for us and home. But it was lies. When he was back on Ithaca he was never content, always looking to the horizon. Once we were his again, he wanted something else.

When at last they pulled off the veil, they say my mother smiled. That is how they knew she was quite stupid. Brides did not smile.

It was the sort of secret I loved to discover, for it made me feel cynical and wise.

I am no coward". My voice rose, and my skin went hoy. "Your father thinks you are" His words were deliberate, as if he were savoring them. "I heard him tell my father so." "He did not" But I knew he had.

The only thing they share is death. You know the word?"..."Their bodies crumble and pass into earth. Their souls turn to cold smoke and fly to the underworld. There they eat nothing and drink nothing and feel no warmth. Everything they reach for slips from their grasp." "How do they bear it?" "As best they can.

There is no one like you" I said, at last. He regarded me a moment, in silence. "So?

When Telegonus came, I saw him eyeing me, waiting for another outburst. But I was pleasant. He should not be so surprised, I thought. I could be pleasant.

You do not command me. The silence went on and on, painful and breathless, like a singer overreaching to finish a phrase. Then,

I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—

There was violence in that room, with so many princes and heroes and kings competing for a single prize, but we knew how to ape civilization.

The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me. Somewhere his soul waits, but it is nowhere I can reach. Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free. His ashes settle among mine, and I feel nothing.

I know how lucky I am, stupid with luck, crammed with it, stumbling drunk. I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath.