Quotes from Madeline Miller

I yanked my gaze to Odysseus and Diomedes, and was horrified to see them smiling. 'Greeting, Price Achilles,' Odysseus said. 'We've been looking for you.

But I had been a stranger to myself turned to stone for no reason I could name.

No soul wish to be sent early to the endless gloom of our underworld. Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

I should have known better than to call upon the gods.

HE WEEPS as he lifts me onto our bed. My corpse sags; it is warm in the tent, and the smell will come soon. He does not seem to care. He holds me all night long, pressing my cold hands to his mouth.

I fucked the sacred bull, all right? Now get the thread.

It was not murder that exiled me, it was my lack of cunning.

I had a little pride, as I have said, and that was good. More would have been fatal.

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 could follow, even into death. Yes , I whispered. Yes.

Pero cuando se lleva una vida solitaria, se dan pocos precisos momentos en los que un alma se sumerge junto a otra, del mismo modo que, una vez al año, las estrellas rozan la tierra. Para mí Dédalo fue esa clase de constelación.

Se inclinaban hacia él como las flores hacia el sol, ávidos de recibir su brillo. Era lo que había dicho Ulises una vez: él tenía luz suficiente para hacerles héroes a todos.

Aquiles se sonrojó como si le hubieran abofeteado. Una cosa era llevar un vestido, impelido por la necesidad, y otra muy distinta que todos lo supieran. Nuestro pueblo reservaba los más feos apelativos para los hombres que actuaban como mujeres; semejantes insultos habían provocado la pérdida de muchas vidas.

Odiseo, hijo de Laertes, el gran viajero, príncipe de mil argucias y artimañas, me había enseñado sus cicatrices y, a cambio, me había permitido fingir que yo no tenía ninguna.

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

De pronto, todos recordamos haber oído hablar de su piel dorada y sus ojos negros y centelleantes como la obsidiana que trocábamos por nuestras olivas. Y en ese momento, ella valió más que todos los presentes apilados en el centro, y aún más, ella valía más que nuestras vidas

I understood now the disgust in my father's eye. His moron son, confessing all. I recalled how his jaw had hardened as I spoke. He does not deserve to be king.

Tell me a hero who was happy. -There isn't.

those seconds, half seconds, that line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that i felt anything at all

I had seen him in such moods. Every petty defect of the world enraged him, all the waste and stupidity and slowness of men, and all the irritants of nature too, biting flies and warping wood and the briars that ripped his cloak. When he had lived with me, I'd smoothed all those things away, wrapping him in my magic and divinity. Perhaps it was why he had been so happy. An idyll, I had called our time. Illusion might have been a better word.

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 can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? it was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kciked up the sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled throuhg the salt. it was enough.

do not fear for Troy. It is only Hector that he wants. Hector, and Hector alone. When Hector is dead, he will stop.

But endurance had always been my virtue, and I kept on.

Iphigenia. A tripping name, the sound of goat hooves on rock, quick, lively, lovely.

He regarded me a moment, in silence . "So?" Something in the way he spoke it drained the last of my anger from me. I had minded, once. But who was I now, to begrudge such a thing? As if he heard me, he smiled , and his face was like the sun .