Quotes from Madeline Miller

Una acción osada y una actitud osada no son lo mismo.

And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again

Kol esam jauni, mums atrodo, kad visas širdies opas ken?iam pirmieji.

The Myrmidons, they had begun calling themselves, ant-men, an old nickname of honor. Another thing Achilles had had to explain to me: the legend of Zeus creating the first Phthians from ants.

They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs.

If he was nervous, even I could not tell. I watched as he greeted them, spoke ringing words that made them stand up straighter. They grinned, loving every inch of their miraculous prince: his gleaming hair, his deadly hands, his nimble feet. They leaned toward him, like flowers to the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all.

Es posible domesticar una serpiente para que coma de tu mano, pero nadie le va a quitar las ganas de morder.

Una jaula de oro no deja de ser jaula.

He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

I wished I were a real goddess so I could give him whales upon a golden plate, and he would never let me go.

How many times would I have to learn? Every moment of my peace was a lie, for it came only at the gods' pleasure.

You think I'd let Apollo have him? He does not deserve such a flower. I blew a discus into the boy's head, that showed the Olympian prig.

He yawned, his eyes heavylidded. "what`s your name?" His kingdom was half, a quarter, an eight the size of my father`s, and i had killed a boy and been exiled and still he did not know me. i grounded my jaw shut and would not speak. He asked again, louder: "What`s your name?

Non mi sorprese come venivo ritratta: la maga altezzosaannichilita di fronte alla spada dell'eroe, inginocchiata a supplicare pietà. Le donne umiliate mi sembrano il passatempo preferito dei poeti. Quasi non possa esistere storia senza che noi strisciamo o piangiamo.

All that smoke and savour rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself. "You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure to not dishonour me." "I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.

I had scarcely known true intelligence - in all of Oceanos' halls most of what passed as cleverness was only archness and spite. Hermes' mind was a thousand times sharper and more swift. It shone like light upon the waves, dazzling to blindness .

A bitch with a cliff for heart.

shine with pride. I knew how painful the death of that hope could be.

The swollen bellies that followed were not a thing of shame; they were profit: more slaves. These unions were not always rape; sometimes there was mutual satisfaction and even affection. At least that is what the men who spoke of them believed.

I watched him hang on the other man's words. He is too trusting. But I would not be the raven on his shoulder all the time, predicting gloom.

It was easy to stay with them long and late, until I heard the creaking of the chariot, and the distant banging of bronze, and returned to greet my Achilles.

Hayat?m çamurdan ve derinlikten olu?uyordu ama ben o karanl?k sular?n bir parças? de?ildim. O sular?n içindeki bir varl?kt?m