630 Quotes by Madeline Miller

A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not 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.

My divinity shines in me like the last days of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead, and can hold nothing in their hands.

You cannot make that promise, I wanted to shout. You know nothing. But whose fault was that? I had kept the face of the world veiled from him. I had painted his history in bright, bold colors, and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it. If I was so old, I should be wise. I should know better than to howl when the bird was already flown.

Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

Penelope said, ‘What makes a witch, then? If it is not divinity?’ ‘I do not know for certain,’ I said. ‘I once thought it was passed through blood, but Telegonus has no spells in him. I have come to believe it is mostly will.’ She nodded. I did not have to explain. We knew what will was.

I learned to sleep during 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.

Have you no more memories?” I am made of memories. “Speak, then.

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.