Madeline Miller famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.
-- Madeline Miller

#Grief #Gone #Earth
There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,â€ Chiron said. â€œAnd perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?
-- Madeline Miller

#Grief #Thinking #Law
My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.
-- Madeline Miller

#Earthquakes #Mind #Wish
I would still be with you. But I could sleep outside, so it would not be so obvious. I do not need to attend your councils. Iâ€”' 'No. The Phthians will not care. And the others can talk all they like. I will still be Aristos Achaion.' Best of the Greeks. 'Your honor could be darkened by it." 'Then it is darkened.' His jaw shot forward, stubborn. 'They are fools if they let my glory rise or fall on this.
-- Madeline Miller

#Fall #Sleep #Greek
In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
-- Madeline Miller

#Love #Hands #Two
I feel like I could eat the world raw.
-- Madeline Miller

#World #Feels
He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.
-- Madeline Miller

#Killers #Sticks #Use
It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright were they dull.
-- Madeline Miller

#Tears #Rising #Dull
and when he moved it was like watching oil spread across a lake, smooth and fluid, almost vicious
-- Madeline Miller

#Lakes #Oil #Smooth
The ship's boards were still sticky with new resin. We leaned over the railing to wave our last farewell, the sun-warm wood pressed against our bellies. The sailors heaved up the anchor, square and chalky with barnacles, and loosened the sails. Then they took their seats at the oars that fringed the boat like eyelashes, waiting for the count. The drums began to beat, and the oars lifted and fell, taking us to Troy.
-- Madeline Miller

#Farewell #Eyelashes #Anchors
He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?
-- Madeline Miller

#Brother #Important #Life Is
No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.
-- Madeline Miller

#Men
I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?
-- Madeline Miller

#Heart #Cutting #People
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.
-- Madeline Miller

#Men #Foolish #Invention
I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.
-- Madeline Miller

#Thinking #Yesterday #Wealth
and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.
-- Madeline Miller

#Moon #Light #Skins
The door snicked shut.
-- Madeline Miller

#Doors
She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.
-- Madeline Miller

#Heart #Parent #Faces
Odysseus inclines his head. "True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another." He spread his broad hands. "We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?" He smiles. "Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.
-- Madeline Miller

#Memories #Men #Hands
When I first started studying Greek, one of my absolute favorite parts was realizing that so many English words had these old, secret roots. Learning Greek was like being given a super-power: linguistic x-ray vision.
-- Madeline Miller

#Roots #Greek #Vision
We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
-- Madeline Miller

#Joy #World
I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
-- Madeline Miller

#Love #Smell #Feet
I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do.
-- Madeline Miller

#Movement #Waterfalls #Leap
I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. â€œPatroclus,â€ he said. He was always better with words than I.
-- Madeline Miller

#Strong #Memories #Hands
I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.
-- Madeline Miller

#Hurt #Air #Worry
. . .nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.
-- Madeline Miller

#Dirty #Mediocrity #Eclipse

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