Top 500 Madeline Miller Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.”

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

353. “But a cracked heart was not enough, and I had grown wise enough to know it. I kissed him and left him there.”

— Madeline Miller

354. “You can,” I said. “But you have always been cautious, Father. You know I have stood against Athena. I have walked in the blackest deeps. You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows what is in me? Will you find out?”

— Madeline Miller

355. “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

356. “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

357. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

359. “I do not think anyone can say what is in someone else.”

— Madeline Miller

360. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

362. “I wish he had let you all die.”

— Madeline Miller

363. “Patroclus.′ Achilles did not slur my name, as people often did, running it together as if in a hurry to be rid of it. Instead, he rang each syllable: Pa-tro-clus.”

— Madeline Miller

364. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

367. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

371. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

373. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

376. “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

377. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

379. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

381. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

384. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

386. “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

387. “You are a better man than I.”

— Madeline Miller

388. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

390. “All I knew was that I hated her. For I was like any dull ass who has ever loved someone who loved another. I thought: if only she were gone, it would change everything.”

— Madeline Miller

391. “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

392. “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

393. “I fixed my gaze on his. “Try,” I said. For a long moment he stared at me. Then he turned and twitched off through the brush. I tell you, for all my spells, that was the first time I truly felt myself a witch...”

— Madeline Miller

394. “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

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

— Madeline Miller

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

— Madeline Miller

397. “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

398. “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

399. “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

400. “He wanted to go. He had always wanted to go, from the moment he was born into my arms.”

— Madeline Miller