Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “I never claimed to be good.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

354. “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

355. “I could have told him more, of the dreams that left me bleary and bloodshot, the almost-screams that scraped my throat as I swallowed them down. The way the stars turned and turned through the night above my unsleeping eyes.”

— Madeline Miller

356. “I had seen the way he looked at Deidameia; or rather the way he did not. It was the same way he had looked at the boys in Phthia, blank and unseeing. He had never, not once, looked at me that way.”

— Madeline Miller

357. “How long would I cling to that handful of minutes, trying to cover myself as if with some threadbare blanket?”

— Madeline Miller

358. “The air had a stinging weight like ocean waves. I felt myself a stranger to the world.”

— Madeline Miller

359. “This is what all mortals ask first, in disbelief, shock, fear. Is there no exception for me?”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

362. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

364. “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

365. “I wish he had let you all die.”

— Madeline Miller

366. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

369. “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

370. “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

371. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

373. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

377. “He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain.”

— Madeline Miller

378. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

380. “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

381. “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

382. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

385. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

388. “You are a better man than I.”

— Madeline Miller

389. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

392. “Telemachus the Just,” I said. He smiled. “That’s what they call you if you’re so boring they can’t think of something better.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

394. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

396. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

398. “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.”

— Madeline Miller

399. “Why should he be peaceful? I never was, nor his father either, when I knew him. The difference was that he was not afraid to be burnt.”

— Madeline Miller

400. “Though the rooms were deserted, there was no speck of dust, and I would learn that none could cross the marble threshold. However I tracked upon it, the floor was always clean, the tables gleaming. The ashes vanished from the fireplace, the dishes washed themselves, and the firewood regrew overnight.”

— Madeline Miller