Quotes from Madeline Miller

After I was born, he tried to keep me inside as much as he could.

I stared into the darkness, straining to hear past the beat of my own blood.

I could not find the words that would reach him. Perhaps there were none.

That is what exile meant: no one was coming, no one ever would. There was fear in that knowledge,

She fell in love with him, and to save his life smuggled him a sword and taught him the way through the Labyrinth, which she had learned from Daedalus himself.

The answer that came to me was from a different tale. Long ago, in my wide bed, I had asked Odysseus: "What did you do? When you could not make Achilles and Agamemnon listen?" He'd smiled in the firelight. "That is easy. You make a plan in which they do not.

Qué era lo que más quería? - Su amante, Patroclo. No me apreciaba mucho, pero también es cierto que los buenos guerreros nunca me aprecian. Aquiles enloqueció tras su muerte; o estuvo a punto de enloquecer.

This is how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.

I had asked Odysseus: 'What did you do? When you could not make Achilles and Agamemnon listen?' He'd smiled in the firelight. 'That is easy. You make a plan in which they do not.

I did not mind the emptiness either. For a thousand years I had tried to fill the space between myself and my family. Filling the rooms of my house was easy by comparison.

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.

Algunas personas son como constelaciones que sólo iluminan la tierra durante una estación.

Podía transformar a un pez en pájaro, pelear con mi leona y luego echarme sobre su vientre con la melena suelta. Quería esuchar sus gritos y resuellos. ¡Me ha mirado! ¡Me voy a convertir en rana!

I learned to sleep through the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.

His face was smile-lined

I was looking for something, I realized, though I could not say what.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who could be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win.

I would not care," I said. The words scrabbled from my mouth. "Whatever you became. It would not matter to me. We would be together." "I know," he said quietly, but did not look at me.

And then I remembered, he will never be old.

It was Daedalus who answered. A golden cage is still a cage.

Even a best iron grows brittle with too much beating

The fame she had described was what all mortals yearn for. It is their only hope of immortality

That was another thing about him. He made you want to spill your secrets.

Nothing is sure, we know that. But if I had to trust that a thing would be done, I would trust it to you.