Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Patroclus,″ Achilles tilted his face up with a gentle finger under his chin. ″I would recognise you in total darkness, were you mute and I deaf. I would recognise you in another lifetime entirely, in different bodies, different times. And I would love you in all of this, until the very last star in the sky burnt out into oblivion″.”

— Madeline Miller

2. “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

3. “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

4. “Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

— Madeline Miller

5. “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

6. “Do not let what you have gained this day be so easily lost.”

— Madeline Miller

7. “I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

— Madeline Miller

8. “Have you no more memories?′ I am made of memories. The memories come, and come. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”

— Madeline Miller

9. “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

— Madeline Miller

10. “A golden cage is still a cage.”

— Madeline Miller

11. “I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.”

— Madeline Miller

12. “I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

14. “You can use a spear for a walking stick, but it will not change its nature.”

— Madeline Miller

15. “This and this and this.”

— Madeline Miller

16. “His eyelids were the color of the dawn sky; he smelled like earth after rain.”

— Madeline Miller

17. “Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.”

— Madeline Miller

18. “There was nothing clever to say, so I said something foolish.”

— Madeline Miller

19. “Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free.”

— Madeline Miller

20. “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

21. “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

22. “As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.”

— Madeline Miller

23. “The poets were always correct,″ I say softly. ″You are half my soul.”

— Madeline Miller

24. “Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”

— Madeline Miller

25. “Name one hero who was happy. You can’t.”

— Madeline Miller

26. “There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

— Madeline Miller

27. “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.”

— Madeline Miller

28. “When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”

— Madeline Miller

29. “I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”

— Madeline Miller

30. “I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.”

— Madeline Miller

31. “We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.”

— Madeline Miller

32. “But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

34. “I am made of memories.”

— Madeline Miller

35. “People are people, whatever age they’re living in. The circumstances may have changed – we go to war with planes instead of chariots – but experiences of grief, longing, rage and love remain the same.”

— Madeline Miller

36. “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.”

— Madeline Miller

37. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

— Madeline Miller

38. “I would look at him and feel a love so sharp it seemed my flesh lay open. I made a list of all the things I would do for him. Scald off my skin. Tear out my eyes. Walk my feet to bones, if only he would be happy and well.”

— Madeline Miller

39. “Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.”

— Madeline Miller

40. “We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”

— Madeline Miller

41. “He did not fear ridicule, he had never known it.”

— Madeline Miller

42. “He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.”

— Madeline Miller

43. “Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow.”

— Madeline Miller

44. “How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?”

— Madeline Miller

45. “Divine blood purified our muddy race, bred heroes from dust and clay.”

— Madeline Miller

46. “It is youth’s gift not to feel its debts.”

— Madeline Miller

47. “It turned out that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.”

— Madeline Miller

48. “I am air and thought and can do nothing.”

— Madeline Miller

49. “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.”

— Madeline Miller

50. “I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.”

— Madeline Miller