Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “The voices of the dead were said to have the power to make the living mad.”

— Madeline Miller

452. “Witches are not so delicate.”

— Madeline Miller

453. “It was true. Odysseus’ favorite task was the sort that only had to be performed once: raiding a town, defeating a monster, finding a way inside an impenetrable city.”

— Madeline Miller

454. “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

455. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

459. “I haunt their dreams. Do not leave, I beg them. Not until you have given me peace. But if anyone hears, they do not answer.”

— Madeline Miller

460. “I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it –.”

— Madeline Miller

461. “He ran from me whenever I wanted him, but the moment I took up my work, he would drum at the floor with his heels, crying for my attention.”

— Madeline Miller

462. “No hay honor en traicionar a los amigos.”

— Madeline Miller

463. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

465. “Achilles’ miracle was his speed. His spear, as he began the first pass, moved faster than my eye could follow. It whirled, flashing forward, reversed, then flashed behind. The shaft seemed to flow in his hands, the dark gray point flickered like a snake’s tongue. His feet beat the ground like a dancer, never still.”

— Madeline Miller

466. “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

467. “Her calmness enraged me.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

471. “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

472. “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

473. “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

474. “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

475. “Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

477. “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

478. “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

479. “It was as if we found the still heart of the universe. Nothing moved except for us.”

— Madeline Miller

480. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

482. “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

483. “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

484. “I brought a withered flower back to life. I banished flies from my house. I made the cherries blossom out of season and turned the fire vivid green. If Aeetes had been there, he would have choked on his beard to see such kitchen tricks. Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.”

— Madeline Miller

485. “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

486. “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

487. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

490. “The thread will run smooth, whether you choose it or not. I tell you as a friend, it is better to seek it on your own terms, to make it go at your pace, than theirs.”

— Madeline Miller

491. “The bull has been killed, sweating the last of its blood into dust and dark bronze bowls. It went quietly to its death, a good omen for the games to come.”

— Madeline Miller

492. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

496. “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

497. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller