Quotes from Madeline Miller

I turned all my firewood to cedar so that its scent would fill my halls each night.

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk, their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun

where there was greed there was hope.

I had been dreaming myself a fish, silvered by sun as it leaped from the sea.

It is youth's gift not to feel its debts

Lorsque nous sommes jeunes, nous croyons être les premiers au monde à ressentir chaque sentiment.

Es correcto buscar la paz para los muertos —insiste Príamo con voz amable—. Tú y yo sabemos bien que no la hay para quienes los sobreviven. —No —susurra Aquiles.

Même le meilleur des fers devient cassant à force d'avoir été trop battu.

Give him to me, I said. I held him up before me and looked into his screaming face. 'Sweet son,' I said, 'you are right, this world is a wild and terrible place, and worth shouting at. But you are safe now, and all of us need to sleep. Will you let us have a little peace?' And he calmed.

We cannot say. We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.

Killing a whole family was something to boast of, a glorious deed that proved you powerful enough to wipe a name from the earth.

Prince Achilles! Aristos Achaion! As

There is only her small hand on my stomach, and the softness of her cheek as I stroke it. It is strange how well she fits there.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what means to be alive.

They think of the stories that will be told, and they long to be in them.

After I was born - and maybe that is not the right word, but if not, then I don't know what is. Woke? Hatched? No, that is worse. I am not an egg. I will say born.

I fucked a sacred bull, all right? Now get the thread.

I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as starts once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me

It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull.

If it were a man, I wondered if I would pity him. But it was not a man. When I passed back by the pen, his friends would stare at me with pleading faces. They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry. Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong

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

Patroclus" It was the name my father had given me, hopefully but injudiciously, at my birth, and it tasted of bitterness on my tonge. "Honor of the father," it meant. I waited for him to make a joke out of it, some witty jape about my disgrace. He did not. perhaps, I thought, he is too stupid to.

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom.

Name one hero who was happy - You can't." "I can't." "I know. They never let you become famous and happy - I'll tell you a secret." "Tell me." "I'm going to be the first.