Quotes from Madeline Miller

i do not know this man, i think. he is no one i have ever seen before.

He made it look beautiful, this sweating, hacking art of ours. I understood why his father did not let him fight in front of the others. How could any ordinary man take pride in his own skill when there was this in the world?

And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone

All this while I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail.

I feel like I could eat the world raw." -- Achilles

The feelings that stirred in me at night seemed strangely distant from those serving girls with their lowered eyes and obedience. I watched a boy fumbling at a girl's dress, the dull look on her face as she poured his wine. I did not wish for such a thing.

He recited the story as if he were giving a recipe for meat. The storms that had blown them half across the world. The lands filled with cannibals and vengeful savages, with sybarites who drugged their wills. They had been ambushed by the cyclops Polyphemus, a savage one-eyed giant who was a son of Poseidon. He had eaten half a dozen men and sucked their bones. Odysseus had had to blind him to escape, and now Poseidon hunted them across the waves in vengeance

his beautiful body lost to bones and gray ash.

La timidez no crea nada.

It was not honor that made Meleager fight, or his friends, or victory, or revenge, or even his own life. It was Cleopatra, on her knees before him, her face streaked with tears. Here is Phoinix's craft: Cleopatra, Patroclus. Her name built from the same pieces as mine, only reversed.

No, I thought. I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.

Because, dear King of Argos, if war comes after some diplomacy or delay, we do not seem so much the villains.

He had a jagged scar on one leg, a seam that stitched his dark brown flesh from heel to knee, wrapping around the muscles of the calf and burying itself in the shadow beneath the tunic. It looked like it had been a knife, I thought, or something like it, ripping upwards and leaving behind feathered edges, whose softness belied the violence that must have caused it.

Je lui dirais que certaines personnes sont comme des constellations qui ne touchent la terre que l'espace d'une saison.

And she wished him to be a god. She had spoken it so simply, as if it were obvious. A god. I could not imagine him so. Gods were cold and distant, far off as the moon, nothing like his bright eyes, the warm mischief of his smiles.

The door closed, and the room swelled around me like a bruise. When she was here, I could pretend it felt small because of her, but when she left the four wood walls seemed to press towards me, like lungs that had breathed in. The window did not help, for it was too high to see from the bed and too small to take in much air.

His head thudded dully against stone, and I saw the surprised pop of his eyes. The ground around him began to bleed.

It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.

So he agreed: I would be exiled, and fostered in another man's kingdom. In exchange for my weight in gold, they would rear me to manhood

no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Now Helen"—Odysseus paused, his arm half-extended to the priest—"remember that I swear only in fellowship, not as a suitor. You would never forgive yourself if you were to choose me." His words were teasing, and drew scattered laughter. We all knew it was not likely that one so luminous as Helen would choose the king of barren Ithaca.

Fear sloshed over me, each wave colder than the last.

palisade, built around the entire camp. Ten miles, he

Tell me," he said, "who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?" "A happy one, of course." "Wrong," he said. "A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.