Quotes from Madeline Miller

I had understood gods could bleed, but I had never seen it. He was one of the greatest of our kind, and the drops that fell from him were golden, smearing his back with a terrible beauty.

My son must live. There is no must to the life of a mortal, except death.

All these gods, all these mortals who aided him. Men talk of his wiles. His true talent was in how well he could take from others.

The sky softened, opening over us like the ripe flesh of a fruit.

Gods and mortals never mixed happily in our stories.

Have you no more memories?" I am made of memories. "Speak, then.

hated him so much I could not speak. He leaned forward in his chair. "May I give you some advice? If you are truly his friend, you will help him leave this soft heart behind. He's going to Troy to kill men, not rescue them." His dark eyes held me like swift-running 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.

It was no world I knew, but I would live in it as long as he would let me.

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

There was always a leader. He was not the largest, and he need not be the captain, but he was the one they looked to for instruction in their cruelty. He had a cold eye and a coiling tension. Like a snake, the poets might say, but I knew snakes better by then.

roots clung hard a moment before yielding

I walked back through those corridors. My mind was bare, my skin bristling as if it would rise off my flesh. Every noise, every touch, the stones beneath my feet, the splash of fountains from a window, crept evilly upon my senses. The air had a stinging weight like ocean waves. I felt myself a stranger to the world.

On peut apprendre à une vipère à vous manger dans la main sans pour autant lui enlever le goût de mordre.

You can," I said. "But you have always been cautious, Father. You know I have stood against Athena. I have walked in the blackest deeps. You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows what is in me? Will you find out?

No hay honor en traicionar a los amigos.

I did what I liked. If you had asked me, I would have said I was happy. Yet I always remembered.

But all I felt was the coolness against my ankle, where his fingers had been a moment before.

Hands, smooth and strong, reaching to touch me. I know those hands.

I always seemed to be in a lull, a strange pocket of emptiness into which no men came, and I was never threatened.

The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.

I watched his face for surprise or disgust, even terror. But he only nodded. "She told me." Of course she had. She was a poisoner at heart; she wanted to be sure I came as villain, not saviour.

Is one life worth more than another? I have never thought so.

The room turned gray, then white. The bed felt cold without him, and too large. I heard no sounds, and the stillness frightened me. It is like a tomb. I rose and rubbed my limbs, slapped them awake, trying to ward off a rising hysteria. This is what it will be, every day, without him. I felt a wild-eyed tightness in my chest, like a scream. Every day, without him.

I tracked my father's burning chariot across the sky. Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.