Top 80 Natalie Haynes Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “There’s comfort in stories which don’t change, even the sad ones.”

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

55. “Agamemnon, she could see, was not. He spent a great deal of time telling everyone about his unparalleled importance, but he rarely wished to make the choices that a king must. How such a weak and petty man had risen to such a position of authority, she had wondered more than once. She had concluded that the Greeks’ selfishness was the cause: every man looked out for himself first and his men second, and the other Greeks after that, if at all. Merit was decided by what a man had, not what he did.”

— Natalie Haynes

56. “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

57. “Men will tell you that Gorgons are monsters, but men are fools. They cannot comprehend any beauty beyond what they can see. And what they see is a tiny part of what there is.”

— Natalie Haynes

58. “Gorgons aren’t supposed to be like gods. We belong here, in the place between the land and the sea, not on a lofty mountain. They put our image on the outside of temples, not within. We look out on mortals, not down on them.”

— Natalie Haynes

59. “It’s important that you know this because he will try to claim there was a battle. But there is no battle to be had between an armed man and a sleeping girl. Don’t forget.”

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

63. “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

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

— Natalie Haynes

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

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

— Natalie Haynes

72. “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

73. “Men often kill for trophies.”

— Natalie Haynes

74. “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

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

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

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

— Natalie Haynes

78. “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

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

— Natalie Haynes

81. “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

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

— Natalie Haynes

83. “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

84. “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