Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “This is what all mortals ask first, in disbelief, shock, fear. Is there no exception for me?”

— Madeline Miller

352. “I did not see the worst of him. Even at his best he was not an easy man. But he was a friend to me in a time when I needed one.” “It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.” “All creatures that are not mad need them.”

— Madeline Miller

353. “My ambivalence, of course, only encouraged him. Any challenge was a game, and any game a pleasure. If I had loved him, he would have been gone, yet my revulsion brought him back and back. He.”

— Madeline Miller

354. “That’s the stone,” I said, “like I told you. It can’t get warm without sun. Haven’t you ever touched a statue?”

— Madeline Miller

355. “He paused now, considering. I loved this about him. No matter how many times I had asked, he answered me as if it were the first time.”

— Madeline Miller

356. “Then he would leave for the underworld, where I could never go, for gods are the opposite of death. I tried to imagine those dusky hills and gray meadows, the shades moving slow and white among them. 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

357. “Everyone knew how they dripped with perfume, were corrupt from soft living.”

— Madeline Miller

358. “It was their fate, as Prometheus had told me, the story that 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.”

— Madeline Miller

359. “Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.”

— Madeline Miller

360. “He was one of the greatest of our kind, and the drops that fell from him were golden, smearing his back with a terrible beauty.”

— Madeline Miller

361. “Do not listen to your enemy... look at them. It will tell you everything.”

— Madeline Miller

362. “Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

— Madeline Miller

363. “The look that passed over her face. Like a comet indeed, when it veers to earth and turns the fields to ash.”

— Madeline Miller

364. “Not every god need be the same, he said.”

— Madeline Miller

365. “I failed him, yet he is a sweet wonder of this world.”

— Madeline Miller

366. “But when I tried to speak them, I found I could not. His cheeks were flushed with shame, and the skin beneath his eyes was weary. 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

367. “There are too many of them,” he said. “It’s simpler if they just remember me.”

— Madeline Miller

368. “She wears a cape, and it is this that undoes her – that allows her to be pulled, limbs light and poised as a cat, from her horse.”

— Madeline Miller

369. “I wish he had let you all die.”

— Madeline Miller

370. “In grief, men must help each other, though they are enemies.”

— Madeline Miller

371. “At least, I thought in those early days, once I cast a spell, I would not have to learn it again. But even that was not true.”

— Madeline Miller

372. “You have been tame your whole life, and now you will be sorry. Yes Father, yes Father – see what it gets you.”

— Madeline Miller

373. “So that is what I must hope for then? That one day I will see my father in the underworld and he will be sorry?” It is better than some of us get. But I held my peace. He had a right to his anger, and it was not my place to try to take it.”

— Madeline Miller

374. “Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”

— Madeline Miller

375. “He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. 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

376. “His words were simple. They had no art to them, which of course was also art.”

— Madeline Miller

377. “That is my mother’s lyre,′ I almost said. The words were in my mouth, and behind them others crowded close. ‘That is my lyre.”

— Madeline Miller

378. “I had not thought him so bold. But of course he was. Artist, creator, inventor, the greatest the world had known.”

— Madeline Miller

379. “I am Achilles, son of Peleus, god-born, best of the Greeks,” he said. “I have come to bring you victory.” A second of startled silence, then the men roared their approval. Pride became us – heroes were never modest.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

381. “Perhaps she thought I hated her. She did not know that I almost asked him, a hundred times, to be a little kinder to her. You do not have to humiliate her so thoroughly, I thought. But it was not kindness he lacked; it was interest.”

— Madeline Miller

382. “He liked such sharpness, for there was nothing in him that had any blood you might spill.”

— Madeline Miller

383. “Even here, behind the darkness of my eyelids, I cannot name the thing I hope for.”

— Madeline Miller

384. “Frail she was, but crafty, with a mind like a spike-toothed.”

— Madeline Miller

385. “It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it. But he surprised me by continuing.”

— Madeline Miller

386. “Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”

— Madeline Miller

387. “Several things happened at once then. Achilles – for it was Achilles – dropped Deidameia’s hand and flung himself joyously at me, knocking me backwards with the force of his embrace.”

— Madeline Miller

388. “When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”

— Madeline Miller

389. “Our mouths opened under each other, and the warmth of his sweetened throat poured into mine. I could not think, could not do anything but drink him in, each breath as it came, the soft movements of his lips. It was a miracle.”

— Madeline Miller

390. “I did not think-″ He could not say it, could not put all his hopes into the proper words. I did not think you could love me. I did not think I could be enough for you to stay. You are the earth, the sky, the sun and the stars and I cannot fathom all that you are, all that you mean to me.”

— Madeline Miller

391. “A look passed across her face. I might have called it rage, if it were not pointed so inward.”

— Madeline Miller

392. “Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods. But how is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. Would you make him another Pyrrhus? Let the stories of him be something more.”

— Madeline Miller

393. “I do not plan to tell her. Telegonus, these are gods. You must keep your tricks close or you will lose everything.”

— Madeline Miller

394. “She seemed to fit into the air like a jewel in its crown.”

— Madeline Miller

395. “Somewhere his soul waits, but it is nowhere I can reach. Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free.”

— Madeline Miller

396. “You are a better man than I.”

— Madeline Miller

397. “At least, I told myself, it was not their brothers, who would have bragged and fought and hunted down my wolves. But of course that was never a real danger. Sons were not punished.”

— Madeline Miller

398. “I tracked my father’s burning chariot across the sky. Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”

— Madeline Miller

399. “The numbness now is merciful. A last few moments of it. Then, the fall.”

— Madeline Miller

400. “I waited beside my son, but he scarcely knew it. His eyes had found the horizon, that seam of waves and sky.”

— Madeline Miller