Quotes from Madeline Miller

His voice was remote, almost careless. "You would not be displeased, I think. With how you look now." My face grew warm, again. But we spoke no more of it.

Our dead come for their vengeance regardless of witnesses

I'm sorry," I said again. I had nothing better to say. He did not love her; he never would.

Let him." He kneels, smooths back the hair on my forehead. I am wrapped in blankets, to muffle the smell.

At that word, Fates, her eyes flashed. She was a goddess of argument, born from the bright, relentless mind of Zeus. If she was forbidden something, even by the three gray goddesses themselves, she would not simply submit. She would set about parsing the constraint down to its atoms, and try to eke a way through.

That is—your friend?" "Philtatos," Achilles says, sharply. Most beloved."Best of men, and slaughtered by your son.

the grudges of gods are as deathless as their flesh,

Fiel, honesta y prudente. Qué palabras tan pasivas, tan plácidas para describir lo que era ella.

That painted ship of theirs was the finest thing about them. Their faces had lines like grandfathers. Their eyes were bloodshot and dead. They flinched from my animals. "Let me guess," I said. "You are lost? You are hungry and tired and sad?

I loved this about him. No matter how many times I had asked, he answered as if it were the first time.

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

I had stood beside my father's light. I had held Aeëtes in my arms, and my bed was heaped with thick-wooled blankets woven by immortal hands. But it was not until that moment that I think I had ever been warm.

Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it just the same.

The breeze was too sweet, and the sun too warm for a thought like that to be spoken.

I told them,' he said to me. 'I told them and I told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.' The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

In those days, my mother was in an especial ill humor. My father had begun to prefer his draughts to her, and her venom over it fell to me.

Soon our conversations spilled out of the night's confinement. I surprised myself with how much there was to say, about everything, the beach and dinner and one boy or another. I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

The thing is, I don't think my husband expected me to be able to talk. I don't blame him for this exactly, since he had known me only as a statue, pure and beautiful and yielding to his art. Naturally, when he wished me to live, that's what he wanted still, only warm so that he might fuck me.

The fates were laughing at me, at Athena, at all of us. It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.

We are not our blood

But in solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

If my childhood had given me anything, it was endurance.

I am sure they will be very grateful." How would you know? I wanted to say. Often those men in most need hate most to be grateful, and will strike at you just to feel whole again.

He had more stories of his son from a single year, I thought, than my father had of me in all eternity.