Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Do not listen to your enemy, Odysseus had once told me. Look at them. It will tell you everything.”

— Madeline Miller

202. “The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”

— Madeline Miller

203. “The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.”

— Madeline Miller

204. “Circe was the first word he ever spoke, and the second was sister.”

— Madeline Miller

205. “My fears forgotten in the golden harbour of his arms.”

— Madeline Miller

206. “I have long wondered something,” I said. ‘When we fought over Athena, how did you know to kneel to me? That it would shame me?’ “Ah, it was a guess. something Odysseus said about you once.” ‘Which was?’ “That the had never met a god who enjoyed their divinity less.”

— Madeline Miller

207. “I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”

— Madeline Miller

208. “Do not try to take my regret from me.”

— Madeline Miller

209. “Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.”

— Madeline Miller

210. “But a monster,” he said, “she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either. So whatever foolish sorrow you harbor, forget it. I think it may be said that you improved her.”

— Madeline Miller

211. “Does no one have the courage? Will no one dare to face me?”

— Madeline Miller

212. “Achilles weeps. He craddles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name. I see his face as if through water, as a fish sees the sun. His tears fall, but I cannot wipe them away. This is my element now, the half-life of the unburied spirit.”

— Madeline Miller

213. “Would I be skimmed milk or a harpy? A foolish gull or a villainous monster?”

— Madeline Miller

214. “If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. “Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”

— Madeline Miller

215. “When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.”

— Madeline Miller

216. “The great chain of fear.”

— Madeline Miller

217. “What was his best part?” “His lover, Patroclus. He didn’t like me much, but then the good ones never do. Achilles went mad when he died; nearly mad, anyway.”

— Madeline Miller

218. “It is funny,” she said, “that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.”

— Madeline Miller

219. “The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine.”

— Madeline Miller

220. “This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun.”

— Madeline Miller

221. “I looked at her, as vivid in my doorway as the moon in the autumn sky. Her eyes held mine, gray and steady. It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”

— Madeline Miller

222. “Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands.”

— Madeline Miller

223. “Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

— Madeline Miller

224. “Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, Prometheus had told me, the story they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.”

— Madeline Miller

225. “We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.”

— Madeline Miller

226. “It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?”

— Madeline Miller

227. “Once when I was young I asked what mortals looked like. My father said, “You may say they are shaped like us, but only as the worm is shaped like the whale.”

— Madeline Miller

228. “Because you’re the reason. Swear it.”

— Madeline Miller

229. “Fear of failure was the worst thing for any spell.”

— Madeline Miller

230. “There is no honour in betraying your friends.”

— Madeline Miller

231. “I would wake, choking on my horror, and stare at the darkness until dawn.”

— Madeline Miller

232. “The spiral shell. Always another curve out of sight.”

— Madeline Miller

233. “Such were my years then. I would like to say that all the while I waited to break out, but the truth is, I’m afraid I might have floated on, believing those dull miseries were all there was, until the end of days.”

— Madeline Miller

234. “Wealth and reputation were the things our people had always killed for.”

— Madeline Miller

235. “You chose her,” he says. “Over me.” “Over your pride.” The word I use is hubris. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods.”

— Madeline Miller

236. “My consolation is that we will be together in the underworld. That we will meet again there, if not in this life. I would not wish to be there without her.”

— Madeline Miller

237. “When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.”

— Madeline Miller

238. “His fingers touched the strings and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once.”

— Madeline Miller

239. “I will not be silenced on my own island.”

— Madeline Miller

240. “I come to say that you may go, and I will help you. But there must be conditions.” Did he know how much those words cost me? I do not think he could. It is youth’s gift not to feel its debts.”

— Madeline Miller

241. “As it turned out, I did kill pigs that night after all.”

— Madeline Miller

242. “Aristos Achaion.” Best of the Greeks.”

— Madeline Miller

243. “Odysseus drew the world to him,” she said. “Telegonus runs after, shaping as he goes, like a river carving a channel.”

— Madeline Miller

244. “Timidity creates nothing.”

— Madeline Miller

245. “His face was like a quiet pool that would hold everything safe in its depth.”

— Madeline Miller

246. “I can please you, I swear it. You will find none more loyal than me. I will do anything.” I do think he loved me a little. For before I could say the thousand humiliating things in my heart, all the proofs of passion I had hoarded, the crawling devotions I would do, I felt his power come around me. And with that same flick he had used upon the cushions, he sent me back to my rooms.”

— Madeline Miller

247. “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

248. “There is nothing I can teach you. You know all that Heracles knew, and more. You are the greatest warrior of your generation, and all the generations before.”

— Madeline Miller

249. “All heroes are fools, he liked to say. What he meant was, all heroes but me.”

— Madeline Miller

250. “But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”

— Madeline Miller