Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The last thing I think is: Achilles.”

— Madeline Miller

52. “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

53. “You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.”

— Madeline Miller

54. “That old sickening feeling returned: that every moment of my life I had been a fool.”

— Madeline Miller

55. “Little by little I began to listen better: to the sap moving in the plants, to the blood in my veins. I learned to understand my own intention, to prune and to add, to feel where the power gathered and speak the right words to draw it to its height. That was the moment I lived for, when it all came clear at last and the spell could sing with its pure note, for me and me alone.”

— Madeline Miller

56. “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

57. “Children of gods always came to their strength faster than mortals. He would miss them when they were gone, I knew. But I would find something else for him. I would help him forget. I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”

— Madeline Miller

58. “I had begun to know what fear was. What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too. A power greater than their own.”

— Madeline Miller

59. “I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”

— Madeline Miller

60. “Did he know, or only guess at Achilles’ destiny? As he lay alone in his rose-colored cave, had some glimmer of prophecy come to him? Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.”

— Madeline Miller

61. “Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.”

— Madeline Miller

62. “It is done. I will think of them no more. I cast them out and I am finished.”

— Madeline Miller

63. “They take what they want, and in return they give you only your own shackles.”

— Madeline Miller

64. “Sweet son,” I said “you are right, this world is a wild and terrible place, and worth shouting at. But you are safe now, and all of us need to sleep. Will you let us have a little peace?”

— Madeline Miller

65. “As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you’ve written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can’t stand there breathing over their shoulders.”

— Madeline Miller

66. “The door snicked shut.”

— Madeline Miller

67. “I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.”

— Madeline Miller

68. “Not a sound, but a sort of silence, a faint hum like the space between note and note in a song.”

— Madeline Miller

69. “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

70. “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

71. “Because, dear King of Argos, if war comes after some diplomacy or delay, we do not seem so much the villains.”

— Madeline Miller

72. “Where there was greed there was hope.”

— Madeline Miller

73. “Name one hero who was happy. You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward. He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.” “Why me?” “Because you’re the reason. Swear it.” “I swear it,” I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. “I swear it,” he echoed. We sat like that for a moment, hands touching. He grinned. “I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

— Madeline Miller

74. “It seemed absurd even to think of it, foolish and improbable as a dream is by dinner.”

— Madeline Miller

75. “You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”

— Madeline Miller

76. “The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.”

— Madeline Miller

77. “The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.”

— Madeline Miller

78. “He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”

— Madeline Miller

79. “You are a golden goddess, beautiful and kind. If I had such a sister, I would never let her go.”

— Madeline Miller

80. “I did not plan to live after he was gone.”

— Madeline Miller

81. “They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs. In my chair by the hearth, I lifted my cup. “Sometimes,” I told him, “you must be content with ignorance.”

— Madeline Miller

82. “Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.”

— Madeline Miller

83. “This, and this and this. We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

— Madeline Miller

84. “I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it – in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent if his doom.”

— Madeline Miller

85. “Children are not sacks of grain, to be substituted one for the other.”

— Madeline Miller

86. “Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know is in dark or disguise, told myself. I would know it even in madness.”

— Madeline Miller

87. “Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”

— Madeline Miller

88. “Bold action and bold manner are not the same.”

— Madeline Miller

89. “When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”

— Madeline Miller

90. “All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.”

— Madeline Miller

91. “Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat.”

— Madeline Miller

92. “You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”

— Madeline Miller

93. “They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power. It is not enough to be an uncle’s favorite, to please some god in his bed. It is not enough even to be beautiful, for when you go to them, and kneel and say, ‘I have been good, will you help me?’ they wrinkle their brows. Oh, sweetheart, it cannot be done. Oh, darling, you must learn to live with it. And have you asked Helios? You know I do nothing without his word.”

— Madeline Miller

94. “Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.”

— Madeline Miller

95. “Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.”

— Madeline Miller

96. “It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.”

— Madeline Miller

97. “What had Deidameia thought would happen, I wondered, when she had her women dance for me? Had she really thought I would not know him? 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

98. “Nothing is empty void, while air is what fills all else. It is breath and life and spirit, the words we speak.”

— Madeline Miller

99. “He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.”

— Madeline Miller

100. “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. I.”

— Madeline Miller