Quotes from Madeline Miller

But I liked it, as if his words were a secret. A thing that looked like a stone, but inside was a seed. […] I was nothing, a stone.

the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

Several things happened at once then. Achilles - for it was Achilles - dropped Deidameia's hand and flung himself joyously at me, knocking me backwards with the force of his embrace.

i could smell the sea. It was everywhere, in my hair, in my clothes, in the sticky damp of my skin. Even here in the grove, amidst the must of leaves and earth, the unwholesome salty decay still found me. My stomach heaved a moment, and I leaned against the scabbed trunk of a tree. The rough bark pricked my forehead, steading me. I must get away from this smell, I thought.

Podría reconocerle por el modo en que respiraba o en que pisaba el suelo. Le reconocería en el fin del mundo, incluso en la muerte.

I had been dreaming myself a fish, silvered by sun as it leapt from the sea. The waves dissolved, became amphorae and grain sacks again.

Cada día era de un color diferente, sus olas, coronadas de espuma, alcanzaban una altura distinta, pero siempre poseía la misma incesante intensidad que te atraía hacia el horizonte.

he buired his face in his hands and did not speak. i held him and whispered all the bits of broken comfort i could find.

Water still streamed from his hair, and I watched it bead, tracing across his arms and the lines of his chest.

I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unravelling them again at night, making nothing.

He is giving a show, I know, of grace, of tolerance, and my teeth clench at the calmness in his tone. He likes this image of himself, the wronged young man, stoically accepting the theft of his prize, a martyrdom for the whole camp to see.

Beautiful Scylla, dainty-doe Scylla, Scylla with her viper heart. Why had she done such a thing? It was not love, I had seen the sneer in her eyes when she spoke

My dear, they must always offer something, even if it is small, even if only wine poured at your spring, else they will forget to be grateful, after.

dux femina facti.

Whichever you choose, you are wrong.

A moment passed, and then I felt her hand on my back. You will be all right, she said. I have done it, and look, I live.

I felt him looking at me, admiring his work. He had not carved me like this, but he was imagining doing it. A beautiful statue, named The Supplicant.

You chose her," he says. "Over me." "Over your pride." The word I use is hubris. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods.

I had found a way through the endless corridors of his pride and fury.

I knew how pleasure looked on him.

who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough. I

island was full of them. What I really wanted was a wild strawberry, to slip sweetly down my irritable throat, and so I told that brown hull. It changed so fast my thumb sank into its soft, red body.

No wonder I had been so slow, I thought. All this while I had been a weaver without wool, a ship without sea. Yet look where I sail.

Each of her features alone was nothing, her nose too sharp, her chin over-strong. Yet together they made a whole like the heart of a flame. You could not look away.