Top 150 Jennifer Saint Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I would not let a man who knew the value of nothing make me doubt the value of myself.”

— Jennifer Saint

2. “Why did I, Phaedra of Knossos and Athens, put my faith in a man?”

— Jennifer Saint

3. “He pushed me against the wall, and I didn’t care that the harsh stone scraped my skin. His kisses were urgent, not soft like they had been by the rocks. I felt like he was branding me.”

— Jennifer Saint

4. “And what possible use could my father, King Minos of Crete, ever have for a treacherous daughter?”

— Jennifer Saint

5. “I watched as the little figure of Icarus swooped up in one final mighty arc before he plunged abruptly like a stone into the cold ocean far below, a stream of feathers spiralling loose in the air behind him. The waves closed over his head in a moment and he was gone.”

— Jennifer Saint

6. “The price we paid for the resentment, the lust and the greed of arrogant men was our pain, shining and bright like the blade of a newly honed knife.”

— Jennifer Saint

7. “Mortals may age, but the gods are prisoners of their own infantile whimsies, never capable of change and never knowing what it is to love because they dare not risk the suffering of loss.”

— Jennifer Saint

8. “The stories of Perseus did not allow for a Medusa with a story of her own.”

— Jennifer Saint

9. “I had been a fool to trust in a hero: a man who could only love the mighty echo of his own name throughout the centuries.”

— Jennifer Saint

10. “It was a miracle – only miracles, surely, should not be so terrifying? Maybe they were; maybe coming up this close to true magic, before your own eyes, would be enough to rip the veil of sanity from anyone’s mind and leave the stark, staring chaos of madness behind.”

— Jennifer Saint

11. “He was not yet the Minotaur. He was just a baby. He was my brother.”

— Jennifer Saint

12. “I flare into life as Helios leads his chariot down below the horizon, the glimmering jewel in the centre of the crown.”

— Jennifer Saint

13. “Minos had always spoken of the marriage I would make one day, a glorious union that would heap honor upon Crete. He should not have boasted. The creeping realization chilled my bones. How could I defend myself against his wrongdoing? If the gods were offended by him and struck down his wife, then why not his daughter?”

— Jennifer Saint

14. “Nothing brought them more joy than the fall of a lovely woman. They picked over her reputation like vultures, scavenging for every scrap of flesh they could devour.”

— Jennifer Saint

15. “The wine tasted like dirt to me. I could shriek out my warnings, claw at my flesh, hurl my goblet right into Paris’ face, but they would still carry on as though I did not exist.”

— Jennifer Saint

16. “I was simply so tired. I felt like I no longer knew who I was. The competent queen who had juggled the needs of the city so expertly was now a slave to the relentless wailing from the crib.”

— Jennifer Saint

17. “You have always known this,” I reminded him. “You told me once that one lifetime of human love was worth the loss.” “I was a fool,” he said.”

— Jennifer Saint

18. “Every woman alive knows that the journey through birth is a voyage between life and death, for her and the infant alike.”

— Jennifer Saint

19. “Over the mountains, the orange flame of the sun was sinking. Helios drove his mighty chariot beyond the horizon, leaving the world to darkness.”

— Jennifer Saint

20. “You have five sons and a wife on Naxos,” I said. “We all grow older, day by day. You know this and yet you leave us, time after time. Why do you seek the love of the world when you have us only for our brief lifetimes? Why must you seek to force a city into submission while your sons’ childhoods drift into dust, nothing but memories that you cast aside?”

— Jennifer Saint

21. “Her eyes locked on to mine. I had thought they would be green, like the cold reptilian flesh that wriggled from her scalp. But they were blue: a cloudless sky, a calm ocean. An ever-replenishing well of sorrow; a sapphire melancholy of surprising gentleness.”

— Jennifer Saint

22. “We would lay down our lives for our children, and every time we faced birth, we stood on the banks of that great river that separated the living from the dead. A massed army of women, facing that perilous passage with no armour to protect us, only our own strength and hope that we would prevail. It didn’t feel like the right conversation to have on the way to her wedding.”

— Jennifer Saint

23. “I’ve been fighting every day of my life. I don’t want to tussle with enemies anymore; I don’t want to face pain and suffering and death. I am tired of battles. When your ship came to Colchis, I saw another life. A man not like my father, not a cruel tyrant, not a sadistic torturer. A man who can give me a home and children, a life without fear.”

— Jennifer Saint

24. “Asterion. A distant light in an infinity of darkness. A raging fire if you came too close. A guide that would lead my family on the path to immortality. A divine vengeance upon us all.”

— Jennifer Saint

25. “What was the loss of a parent compared to that of a daughter? I didn’t want him here, comparing his grief to mine.”

— Jennifer Saint

26. “I danced for the end of everything I knew and the beginning of everything I did not.”

— Jennifer Saint

27. “We might only have a mortal lifetime, but it will belong to us, and no one else.”

— Jennifer Saint

28. “A hero would not shrink from his destiny, he would not sneak from his dungeon and flee the fight. His name wouldn’t ring through the ages for that.”

— Jennifer Saint

29. “I lost myself in the frenzy of creation, hours gone in the blink of an eye as the shuttle flew back and forth beneath my hands. When the tapestry was done, I beheld it with a fierce kind of pride. It was not full of dutiful scenes of praise to the gods. It was something else entirely.”

— Jennifer Saint

30. “I held Medusa’s image in my head, calming my deep ragged breaths. Her snakes hissed and spat and contorted about her head, striking fear into the hearts of so-called heroes as they cringed away. I could be the same. My rage would be my shield.”

— Jennifer Saint

31. “I knew it was a king’s duty to hold up the sky for his citizens, to prevent them from being crushed beneath it, no matter how much his back may buckle or his muscles scream for mercy.”

— Jennifer Saint

32. “If I could descend to the Underworld swiftly and painlessly, then I would. I would gulp at the waters of the Lethe and let their soporific streams wash away every memory I possess. But I cannot.”

— Jennifer Saint

33. “Why did I, Phaedra of Knossos and Athens, put my faith in a man? When I should have seen that what I truly wanted was simply to run away.”

— Jennifer Saint

34. “His words were not planned or deliberated over. He did not seek to impress me with embroidered and embellished tales. They were quite enough on their own.”

— Jennifer Saint

35. “The gods do not know love, because they cannot imagine an end to anything they enjoy. Their passions do not burn brightly as a mortal’s passions do, because they can have whatever they desire for the rest of eternity. How could they cherish or treasure anything? Nothing to them is more than a passing amusement, and when they have done with it, there will be another.”

— Jennifer Saint

36. “All mortals live and die by the threads they spin – and each mortal shall die when they cut that thread.”

— Jennifer Saint

37. “I truly had the gift of prophecy, breathed into my mouth by Apollo himself. But no one would ever believe another word I said.”

— Jennifer Saint

38. “The oracle warned that I would lose myself, but the opposite is true. I am more myself than I have ever been. I am wild, I am free. I am Atalanta.”

— Jennifer Saint

39. “Let him come back so that I can see his eyes as the light drains from them. Let him come back and die at the hands of his bitterest enemy. Let him come back so that I can watch him suffer. And let me make it slow.”

— Jennifer Saint

40. “Often, they would say that at the very moment Agamemnon raised the knife, Artemis took pity on Iphigenia and swapped her for a deer. In this version of the story, my daughter lives on as a priestess and favourite of the goddess on an island somewhere. Crucially, in this telling, Agamemnon did nothing more than slaughter a simple animal. It’s poetic and pretty, and so very clean.”

— Jennifer Saint

41. “The gods would take what they wanted, whenever they wanted it.”

— Jennifer Saint

42. “The cold green of his eyes. Like the shock of the chill waters when the sea floor drops away unexpectedly beneath your feet and you realise that you have swum out far beyond your depth.”

— Jennifer Saint

43. “A fallen woman is the sweetest entertainment they know; I saw it before, in Crete. I will not let it happen to me.”

— Jennifer Saint

44. “My story would not be one of death and suffering and sacrifice. I would take my own place in the songs that would be sung about Theseus: the princess who saved him and ended the monstrosity that blighted Crete.”

— Jennifer Saint

45. “Where there was evil, he routed it rather than weighed it up to see how he could turn it to his own advantage. Where there was terror and darkness, he vanquished it and flooded the world with searing light.”

— Jennifer Saint

46. “They are the cause of their own suffering, and yet they will never see it. They will rage against the gods all day long, and pray to them and plead for their mercy in the darkness of night. But they will never see how simply they could make their lives better for themselves.”

— Jennifer Saint

47. “Our fear. That was how the god’s grew great.”

— Jennifer Saint

48. “It would be a convenient route for an inconvenient daughter.”

— Jennifer Saint

49. “I watched the fire spark into the night sky and wondered where she could be. Making her way down that dank, twisting path to the Underworld alone? I had gone everywhere before her; trodden the paths I sent her down to make sure they were safe before I let her go. How could I let her go now, to where I did not know, without me at her side?”

— Jennifer Saint

50. “Can’t you see that it just goes on, over and over? The gods demand their justice, but we suffer for it, every time.”

— Jennifer Saint