Quotes from Madeline Miller

would not be ground into the earth. You loathed them as I did. I think it is where our power comes from.

She hated our family? She had always seemed to me their distillation, a glittering monument to our blood's vain cruelty. Yet it was true what she said: nymphs were allowed to work only through the power of others. They could expect none for themselves.

You dare to threaten me?" These gods, I thought. They always say the same thing.

They would both have run screaming at the first tooth. They cannot bear any pain at all. They are not like us.

I heard a humming, like before a spell is cast. His gaze was a honed blade. All this had been prologue. As if we were in a play, we stood.

They were sick with longing for their hands, those appendages men use to mitigate the world.

That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.

I'd like to be a hero, though.

Overhead, my aunt sailed, but I did not trouble with her anymore. She liked to watch lovers, and I had not been one of those for a long time. Perhaps I had never been.

I have seen her do a thousand such tricks a thousand times. My father always fell for them. He believed the world's natural order was to please him.

El pelo le centelleaba como agua vertida sobre bronce pulido.

Loyal, songs called her later. Faithful and true and prudent. Such passive, pale words for what she was.

Witchcraft is nothing but such drudgery. Each herb must be found in its den, harvested at its time, grubbed up from the dirt, culled and stripped, washed and prepared. It must be handled this way, then that, to find out where its power lies. Day upon patient day, you must throw out your errors and begin again. So why did I not mind? Why did none of us mind?

My hands were cut almost to blood by jagged shards of rock. My feet left stains where they stepped. The pain was welcome, ordinary and clean. So easy to bear it was laughable.

Even the most beautiful nymph is largely useless, and an ugly one would be nothing, less than nothing. She would never marry or produce children. She would be a burden to her family, a stain upon the face of the world. She would live in the shadows, scorned and reviled. But a monster always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either.

I did not walk as a mortal walks, but as a god, and the miles fell away beneath my feet.

He knew ten years of stories. I felt keen and hungry as a bear in spring.

I could feel his power reaching for my secrets. 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. I owed him nothing. He would have of me only what I wanted to give.

But Athena had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.

How often in those days did I think of Odysseus' smiling child? I tried his trick, along with all the rest. Held my son's floppy body up into the air, promised him he was safe. He only screamed louder. Whatever made the prince Telemachus so sweet, I thought, it must have come from Penelope. This was the child I deserved.

Every step was perfect, like a gift she gave herself, and she smiled, receiving it.

I would be more," I said. "I would be all.

Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother's lyre. He had brought it with him. 'I wish I had known,' I said the first day, when he had showed it to me. 'I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it.' He smiled. 'Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.

I can veil the sky itself. Just try to watch me.