Quotes from Madeline Miller

they won't fear you as they fear the rest of us.

Did he know how much those words cost me? I do not think he could. It was youth's gift not to feel its debts.

we reached for each other, and i thoughts of how many nights i had laid awake in this room, loving him in silence. later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. "if you have to go, you know i will go with you".

This, out of all of it, was perhaps the strangest: that he was their commander now. He would be expected to know them all, their names and armor and stories. He no longer belongs to me alone.

Diceva ciò che pensava e restava stupito quando gli altri non facevano lo stesso. Qualcuno avrebbe potuto scambiare quel tratto per ingenuità. Ma non è una caratteristica del genio andare sempre dritto al cuore?

Memories were built of air, and blew away.

If they did not weep, I would not either.

Useless information is my curse, I'm afraid

There I discovered at last the limits of my power. However potent the mixture, however well woven the spell, the toad kept trying to fly, and the mouse to sting. Transformation touched only bodies, not minds.

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living but it did nothing to appease the dead.

The first good deed in your dissolute life. Aren't you curious what it would feel like?" He laughed, but I did not press him further. He was still, always, an Olympian, still Zeus' son. I was allowed license because it amused him, but I never knew when that amusement might end. You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

And to the far north were a people who did not believe that Oceanos' river circled the earth, but instead it was a great girdling serpent, thick around as a boat and always hungry. It could never be still, for its appetite drove it ever onwards, devouring everything bite by bite, and one day when it had eaten all the world, it would devour itself.

Every prince needs to know his lands, and there's no better way to learn than by grazing the goats.

An ordinary wife would have counted herself lucky to find a husband with Peleus' mildness, his smile-lined face. But for the sea-nymph Thetis nothing could ever eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.

That is how things go. You fix them, and they go awry, and then you fix them again.

In the old days I would have rushed forth with a brimming cup of answers, to give him all he wanted. But I was not the same as I had been.

That night we camped on the shore of a flourishing green land. Around their fires, the men were tense and quiet, muffled by dread. I could hear their whispers, the wine sloshing as they passed it. No man wanted to lie awake imagining tomorrow.

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power. It is not enough to be an uncle's favorite, to please some god in his bed. It is not enough even to be beautiful, for when you go to them, and kneel and say, 'I have been good, will you help me?' they wrinkle their brows.

I felt as if I was dying just to think of it; plummeting through a blind, black sky

He wanted to see how moonish I was over him. But all the sop in me was gone. I did not lie dreaming of him during the days, I did not speak his name into my pillow.

I am only a nymph after all, for nothing is more common among us than this.

And I will always keep a fire," he said, "burning for you always. If you will allow me.

In the stories, the gods have the power to delay the moon's course if they wish, to spin a single night the length of many.

I was too wild to feel any shame. It was true. I would not just uproot the world, but tear it, burn it, do any evil I could to keep Glaucos by my side.