Top 80 Natalie Haynes Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “There’s comfort in stories which don’t change, even the sad ones.”

— Natalie Haynes

52. “There is one question that devours me still. Why didn’t I close my eyes?”

— Natalie Haynes

53. “Euripides was an astonishing writer of women. He wrote more and better female roles than almost any other male playwright who has ever lived.”

— Natalie Haynes

54. “You’re the one who thinks anything that doesn’t look like you must be a monster.′ ‘They have snakes for hair!’ Perseus cried. ‘Snakes are’t monsters,’ said Hermes. ‘And tusks.’ ‘Wild boar aren’t monsters either.’ ‘And wings.’ ‘I’m sure even you don’t think birds are monsters.”

— Natalie Haynes

55. “Their stories should be read, seen, heard in all their difficult, messy, murderous detail. They aren’t simple, because nothing interesting is simple.”

— Natalie Haynes

56. “Can you even begin to count the myriad ways in which your life might be affected by the choices of other people – people you have never met, whose existence is utterly hidden from you – are making every day?”

— Natalie Haynes

57. “A name can be in lots of places at once, she replies. A person can’t.”

— Natalie Haynes

58. “No one could help being afraid of something. And being afraid of dying must be especially awful, because there was no hope of avoiding it.”

— Natalie Haynes

59. “But one thing is certain: those daughters of Leda are a plague on their menfolk. Did Odysseus worry that he would receive a similar welcome here on Ithaca? That I, the devout Penelope, would treat him as Clytemnestra had treated her husband? The idea is preposterous. My name is a byword for patience and loyalty, no matter which bard sings it. But that is my Odysseus. And your Odysseus. Always finding things out the hard way.”

— Natalie Haynes

60. “I’m wondering if you still think of her as a monster. I suppose it depends on what you think that word means. Monsters are, what? Ugly? Terrifying? Can a monster be beautiful if it is still terrifying? Perhaps it depends on how you experience fear and judge beauty. And is a monster always evil? Is there ever such a thing as a good monster? Because what happens when a good person becomes a monster?”

— Natalie Haynes

61. “Because really, how many cannibalistic giants can one Greek plausibly meet as he sails the open seas?”

— Natalie Haynes

62. “He had the feeling he was irritating his divine companions, but he didn’t really know why, so he didn’t know how to stop.”

— Natalie Haynes

63. “Our gods are conveniently like us, he would say, and why should they be? No answer I offered to this question ever satisfied him, until I gave in and said it must be because we invented them.”

— Natalie Haynes

64. “But the verb in Pandora’s name is active, not passive: literally she is all-giving rather than all-gifted.”

— Natalie Haynes

65. “I know when you talk of beauty you mean something different from what I mean.’ ‘I see.’ He took a step towards her, and she forced herself not to take a step back. ‘So what do you mean by beauty, little Gorgon?’ ‘Euryale tends every one of her sheep like it is a child. Sthenno learned to cook so she could feed me when I was little. They care about me and protect me. That is beauty.”

— Natalie Haynes

66. “But feeling fear was not the same as lacking courage. Anyone could be brave if he felt no fear. The Trojans murmured that this was true of Achilles, this was why he was so lethal. He rode into battle on his chariot, with no care whether he lived or died. None at all. He cared only for the safety of his friend, for Patroclus.”

— Natalie Haynes

67. “That is what mortals do: first they ask, then they beg, finally they bargain.”

— Natalie Haynes

68. “News always reached Miss Marple, one way or another.”

— Natalie Haynes

69. “She saw all his vanity and pettiness and wondered why mortals worshipped any god like this.”

— Natalie Haynes

70. “He thinks anyone who is not like him is a monster: have you noticed? And any monster needs killing.”

— Natalie Haynes

71. “The failure of his mission is assured from the moment he undertakes it. There is something cripplingly true about this, isn’t there? That we are so often the authors of our own misfortunes because of the same qualities which makes us brave, or hopeful, or loving in the first place. This Orpheus hasn’t been gripped by madness, he has been afflicted by fear. And because the fear eventually overwhelms him, the thing he feared comes true.”

— Natalie Haynes

72. “No sea god would want to feel so weakened. A shudder ran through Sthenno as she thought of what she had lost: the sweet sense of owning herself and her feelings, of having no concerns at all, or only the very mildest kind. All of this was gone, exchanged without warning for a cold, gripping panic whenever a child stumbled or hid or cried. This, she knew, was love. And she felt it even though she did not want it.”

— Natalie Haynes

73. “When people ask why tell the stories that we know best from the Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective, or Circe’s perspective, they presuppose that the story ‘should’ be told from Odysseus’ point of view. Which means the answer to this question should always be: because she’s in the damn story. Why wouldn’t we want to hear from her?”

— Natalie Haynes

74. “He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the more heroic act?”

— Natalie Haynes

75. “So you’re homesick for somewhere you’ve never been?”

— Natalie Haynes

76. “There’s never any real need to say something hurtful unless you can’t help it.”

— Natalie Haynes

77. “Crowds are curious things: made up of individuals, but with a character entirely their own.”

— Natalie Haynes

78. “There was something displeasing about mortals, which the gods never spoke about, because they all knew it to be true. They had a strange smell – faint, when they were young, ripening to a stench as they grew old – but always present. It was the odour of death. Even the healthy ones, the uninjured, even children had it, this invisible, indelible mark.”

— Natalie Haynes

79. “In the small hours of the morning, when men and women whispered their secret prayers, they were to her. They begged not for health and long life, as they did during daylight hours. They begged for the blinding, deafening force of lust to be visited upon them, and they begged for reciprocation.”

— Natalie Haynes

80. “At first, he was almost torn apart by dogs. He had forgotten – of course he had – that the swineherd’s dogs were not the same ones that had barked at strangers when he was last on Ithaca. Dogs cannot wait as long as wives: these hounds were the pups of the pups of the original dogs, I should think.”

— Natalie Haynes

81. “Why should the past be any guarantee of the future?”

— Natalie Haynes

82. “Euryale liked humans... She liked the way they were so prone to anxiety and haste.”

— Natalie Haynes

83. “Mortals are all the same,′ she said to her sisters. ‘They think their concerns are everyone’s concerns.”

— Natalie Haynes

84. “Men often kill for trophies.”

— Natalie Haynes