Quotes from Madeline Miller

What do children always hope? To make their parents shine with pride. I knew how painful the death of that hope could be.

He ran from me whenever I wanted him, but the moment I took up my work, he would drum at the floor with his heels, crying for my attention.

You have been tame your whole life, and now you will be sorry. Yes Father, yes Father—see what it gets you.

I am made of memories

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?

I kneel before him, his leg in my hands. "Eurypylus," I say. "Can you speak?" "Fucking Paris," he says.

I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.

When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.

The truce between the gods held only because Titans and Olympians each kept to their sphere.

I had hoped…" He trailed off, but the rest was clear. What do children always hope? To make their parents shine with pride. I knew how painful the death of that hope could be.

When sculptors shape their stone, they shape it after him.

It was one of my favorite things about him, how he admired the world like a jewel, turning its facets to catch the light. A well-made boat, a well-grown tree, a well-told story, these were all pleasures to him.

But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.

I looked at her, as vivid in my doorway as the moon in the autumn sky. Her eyes held mind, gray and steady. It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had every believed it, I no longer did.

Would I be skimmed milk or a harpy? A foolish gull or a villainous monster?

I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread: my father was not near, nor boys. I was not hungry, or tired, or sick. This feeling was different.

They never let you be famous AND happy.

This was how I came to be ten, and an orphan. This is how I came to Phthia.

Is there a moment that a heart cracks?

Every moment he was with me, I felt a rushing in my throat, which was my love for him, so great sometimes I could not speak.

The numbness now is merciful. A last few moments of it. Then, the fall.

He was beautiful - like a god, the poets would say.

Yet some say lovers are mad.