Quotes from Madeline Miller

was used to unhappiness, formless and opaque, stretching out to every horizon. But this had shores, depths, a purpose and a shape. There was hope in it, for it would end, and bring me my child. My son. For whether by witchcraft or prophetic blood, that is what I knew he was.

I come to say that you may go, and I will help you..." Did he know how much those words cost me? I do not think he could. It is youth's gift not to feel its debts.

I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyacinths we had walked through, their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to. I cannot describe it. It is sweet, but not just. It is strong but not too strong. Something like almond, but that still is not right. Sometimes, after we have wrestled, my own skin smells like it.

Odysseus shrugged. "There are many ways to start a war. I always think raiding makes a good beginning. It accomplishes almost the same thing as diplomacy, but with greater profit.

Once again, I wished that someone else were there on the island. Not to commiserate now, but to cherish him with me. I would say, Look, can you believe it? We have come through the rocks and winds. I failed him, yet he is a sweet wonder of this world.

But though he had saved them, he came too late. Too many lives had been lost to his pride. And so they gave him no gratitude, no gifts. Only their hatred for not having spared them sooner.

But it struck me then that at the root of all those reasons was a sort of fear. And I have never been a coward.

She did not use those gray eyes on me. If she had, I would have refused her. She waited only. It was true that [waiting] looked well on her. She seemed to fit into the air like a jewel in its crown.

Divine days fall like water from a cataract, and I had not learned yet the mortal trick of counting them.

Until this moment I had been a prince, expected and announced. Now I was negligible.

The fragility of mortals bred kindness and good grace. They knew how to value friendship and an open hand.

current. "He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

Are you always so suspicious?" "What can I say? The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.

If I do this thing," he said, "it is the last I will ever do for you. Do not come begging again." "Father," I said, "I never will. I leave this place tomorrow." He would not ask where, he would not even wonder. So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

The world is an unjust place." 'Death's brother is the name that poets give to sleep.

I looked into his good face. Not good because it was handsome, but because it was itself...

I find the folly of men amusing

At the same time, Achilles answered coolly, "My husband.

I passed a pear tree drifted with white blossoms. A fish splashed in the moonlit river. With every step I felt lighter. An emotion was swelling in my throat. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.

A bitter paradox, I thought: to keep his son he had to lose him.

His words were simple. They had no art to them, which of course was also art.

When I was young, I overheard our palace surgeon. He said that the medicines he gave out were only for show. Most hurts heal by themselves, he said, if you give them time. It was the sort of secret I loved to discover,

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

How did it happen?" There was a piece of me that shouted its alarm: if you speak he will turn gray and hate you. But I pushed past it. If he turned gray, then he did. I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unraveling them again at night, making nothing. I told him the whole tale of it, each jealousy and folly and all the lives that had been lost because of me.