630 Quotes by Madeline Miller

Whatever she tried, my spells would hold. Not even Odysseus could talk his way past witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.

It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.

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.

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.

Name one hero who was happy. You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward. He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.” “Why me?” “Because you’re the reason. Swear it.” “I swear it,” I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. “I swear it,” he echoed. We sat like that for a moment, hands touching. He grinned. “I feel like I could eat the world raw.

The great chain of fear.

He weeps as he lifts me into our bed. My corpse sags; it’s 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.

Timidity creates nothing.

I tracked my father’s burning chariot across the sky. Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.