Madeline Miller: Trending quotes

“We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.”

“This, I say. This and this. The way his hair looked in summer sun. His face when he ran. His eyes, solemn as an owl at lessons. This and this and this. So many moments of happiness, crowding forward.”

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

“Name one hero who was happy.”

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

“He smiled, and his face was like the sun.”

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

“Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me?”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

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

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

“I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

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

“I am made of memories.”

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”

“Bring him back to me,' he told them.”

“He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?”