Quotes from Madeline Miller

Will you tell me, what is a mortal like?" "There is no single answer. They are each different. The only thing they share is death.

I will wait for you among the shades

Men will hear of your skill, and they will wish for you to fight their wars." He paused. "What will you answer?" "I do not know," Achilles said. "That is an answer for now. It will not be good enough later," Chiron said.

He does not mean it does not hurt. He does not mean 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 it means to be alive.

It was a strange time. Over us, every second, hung the terror of Schilles' destiny, while the murmurs of war among the gods grew louder. But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it-in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom. The days passed, and he lived. The months passed, and I could go a whole day without looking over the precipice of his death. The miracle of a year, then two.

Every day makes me old," she said. "I do not have your years to waste. As for that safety, I do not want it. It is only more chains. Let them come at me if they dare.

It made me dizzy to realise that this was but a fraction of all the men the world had bred. How could such variation endure, such endless iteration of minds and faces? Did the earth not go mad?

My days had narrowed to the ambit of my eyes and my fingers' ends.

He is too young to know himself a prisoner.

I had not thought him so bold. But of course he was. Artist, creator, inventor, the greatest the world had known.

Even in her pain, she commanded the room, drawing all the light to herself, leeching the world around her pale as mushrooms.

The evening had been pleasant, but I felt roiled and muddy, my mind like river-silt stirred up from its beds.

When he was gone, would I be like Achilles sailing over his lost lover Patroclus? I tried to picture myself running up and down the beaches, tearing at my hair, cradling some scrap of old tunic he had left behind. Crying out for the loss of half my soul.

Don't you know?" she had said. "The gods love their monsters.

It is law that guests must be fed before the host's curiosity.

I thought of his eyes when he had spoken of Icarus, that pure, shining love. To my sister, it was no more than a tool, a sword to hang over his head and make him her slave.

I hope you will choose better ahead. You have always trusted too easily.

He will be a good ruler, I thought. Fair-minded and warm. He will not be consumed like his father was. He had never been hungry for glory, only for life.

I will eat these herbs. Then whatever is truly in me, let it be out, at last.

Then, child, make another.

He is a connoisseur of pain.

Will you come with me?" he asked. The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. "Yes," I whispered. "Yes.

Will you tell me who hurt you?' I imagine saying, 'You.' But that is nothing more than childishness.

All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here.