Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.”

— Madeline Miller

452. “If I were valuable to anyone, I would not be allowed to live alone.”

— Madeline Miller

453. “Into such miseries, your son came. Bright as a sunrise, sweet as ripe fruit.”

— Madeline Miller

454. “There was a sort of innocence to him, I thought. I do not mean this as the poets mean it: a virtue to be broken by the story’s end, or else upheld at greatest cost. Nor do I mean that he was foolish or guileless. I mean that he was made only of himself, without the dregs that clog the rest of us.”

— Madeline Miller

455. “That’s the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief.”

— Madeline Miller

456. “In our stories these divinities had to work by wheedling and flattery, by favors won from stronger gods. They could not do much themselves. Except live, forever.”

— Madeline Miller

457. “His eyes opened. “Name one hero who was happy.” I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason’s children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus’ back.”

— Madeline Miller

458. “I felt myself tremble, but I would not let him see it. Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it jus the same.”

— Madeline Miller

459. “I always seemed to be in a lull, a strange pocket of emptiness into which no men came, and I was never threatened.”

— Madeline Miller

460. “After that, I was craftier with my observation, kept my head down and my eyes ready to leap away. But he was craftier still. At least once a dinner he would turn and catch me before I could feign indifference. Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moments in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.”

— Madeline Miller

461. “She was a poisoner at heart; she wanted to be sure I came as villain, not savior.”

— Madeline Miller

462. “I was giddy feeling his first kicks and I spoke to him every moment, as I crushed my herbs, as I cut clothes for his body, wove his cradle out of rushes. I imagined him walking beside me, the child and boy and man that he would be.”

— Madeline Miller

463. “Witchcraft transforms the world. He wanted only to join it.”

— Madeline Miller

464. “Water still streamed from his hair, and I watched it bead, tracing across his arms and the lines of his chest.”

— Madeline Miller

465. “No one would remember his glory, or his honesty, or his beauty; all his gold would be turned to ashes and ruin.”

— Madeline Miller

466. “Her calmness enraged me.”

— Madeline Miller

467. “I knew how pleasure looked on him.”

— Madeline Miller

468. “Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?” “A happy one, of course.” “Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.”

— Madeline Miller

469. “He would patch their ships and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.”

— Madeline Miller

470. “I drew my divinity up, cold and bracing around me, and went to open the door.”

— Madeline Miller

471. “Every day makes me old,” she said. “I do not have your years to waste. As for that safety, I do not want it. It is only more chains. Let them come at me if they dare.”

— Madeline Miller

472. “War has always seemed to me a foolish choice for men. Whatever they win from it, they will have only a handful of years to enjoy before they die. More likely they will perish trying.”

— Madeline Miller

473. “I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.”

— Madeline Miller

474. “Some walked hand in hand with those they had loved in life; some waited, secure that one day their beloved would come. And for those who had not loved, whose lives had been filled with pain and horror, there was the black river Lethe, where one might drink and forget. Some consolation.”

— Madeline Miller

475. “Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it just the same.”

— Madeline Miller

476. “I did not hear them. His presence was like a stone in my shoe, impossible to ignore.”

— Madeline Miller

477. “The door closed, and the room swelled around me like a bruise. When she was here, I could pretend it felt small because of her, but when she left the four wood walls seemed to press towards me, like lungs that had breathed in.”

— Madeline Miller

478. “The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me.”

— Madeline Miller

479. “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breath came and his feet struck to earth.”

— Madeline Miller

480. “He landed, and the weapons were already lifted, held with a deadly poise that was like no girl, nor no man either. The greatest warrior of his generation.”

— Madeline Miller

481. “She brought the whole urgent universe wherever she went, portents and angry deities and a thousand looming perils.”

— Madeline Miller

482. “I had no altar, but I did not need one: anywhere I was became my temple.”

— Madeline Miller

483. “At Troy he found at last a scope to equal his abilities.”

— Madeline Miller

484. “This and this and this, I said to him.”

— Madeline Miller

485. “The spells hung on us yet I felt weightless.”

— Madeline Miller

486. “The voices of the dead were said to have the power to make the living mad.”

— Madeline Miller

487. “Minos, king of Crete, son of Zeus and a mortal woman.”

— Madeline Miller

488. “His presence was like a stone in my shoe, impossible to ignore. His skin was the color of just-pressed olive oil, and smooth as polished wood, without scabs and blemishes that covered the rest of us.”

— Madeline Miller

489. “Therapon was the word he used. A brother-in-arms sworn to a prince by blood oaths and love. In war, these men were his honor guard; in peace, his closest advisers. It was a place of highest esteem, another reason the boys swarmed Peleus’ son, showing off; they hoped to be chosen.”

— Madeline Miller

490. “We cannot say. We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.”

— Madeline Miller

491. “You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure you do not dishonor me.” “I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.” His body was rigid with wrath. He looked as though he had swallowed a stone, and it choked him. “Give Mother my greetings,” I said. His jaw bit down and he was gone.”

— Madeline Miller

492. “Such passive, pale words for what she was.”

— Madeline Miller

493. “Do you always talk to pigs when I am gone?”

— Madeline Miller

494. “Patroclus” It was the name my father had given me, hopefully but injudiciously, at my birth, and it tasted of bitterness on my tonge. “Honor of the father,” it meant. I waited for him to make a joke out of it, some witty jape about my disgrace. He did not. perhaps, I thought, he is too stupid to.”

— Madeline Miller

495. “His trust was a part of him, as much as his hands or his miraculous feet. And despite my hurt, I would not wish to see it gone, to see him as uneasy and fearful as the rest of us, for any price.”

— Madeline Miller

496. “Soy aire y pensamiento, y nada puedo hacer.”

— Madeline Miller

497. “I am only a nymph after all, for nothing is more common among us than this.”

— Madeline Miller

498. “I could have sat and worked awhile, but the change of hands would show in the cloth.”

— Madeline Miller

499. “I had seen him in such moods. Every petty defect of the world enraged him, all the waste and stupidity and slowness of men, and all the irritants of nature too, biting flies and warping wood and the briars that ripped his cloak.”

— Madeline Miller

500. “That night I lie in bed beside Achilles. His face is innocent, sleep-smoothed and sweetly boyish. I love to see it. This is his truest self, earnest and guileless, full of mischief but without malice. He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus’ wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.”

— Madeline Miller