Quotes from Madeline Miller

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

How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?

But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself.

I felt the currents move. The grains of sand whispered against each other. His wings were lifting. The darkness around us shimmered with clouds of his gilded blood. Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands.

He collects my ashes himself, though this is a women's duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks. 'When I am dead, I charged you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.

As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.

I do not think anyone can say what is in someone else.

Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, Prometheus had told me, the story they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.

The last thing I think is: Achilles.

Bold action and bold manner are not the same.

There is no honour in betraying your friends.

The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.

I stepped into those woods and my life began.

All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal's voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.

He knew, but it was not enough. The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not.

But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

Achilles makes a sound like choking. "There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw." His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector's throat.

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?

It's not fair," I said. "It cannot be." "Those are two different things," my grandmother said.

Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.

It is funny," she said, "that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father's halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.