Top 100 Madeline Miller Quotes
#1. I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do.
Madeline Miller
#2. 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?
Madeline Miller
#3. Divine blood purified our muddy race, bred heroes from dust and clay.
Madeline Miller
#4. That is - your friend?"
"Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.
Madeline Miller
#5. She wants you to be a god," I told him.
"I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.
Madeline Miller
#6. They leaned towards him, like flowers to the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all.
Madeline Miller
#7. Success in such a war as this comes only through men sewn to a single purpose, funnelled to a single spear thrust rather than a thousand needle-pricks.
Madeline Miller
#8. And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. 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. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull.
Madeline Miller
#10. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.
Madeline Miller
#11. It seemed absurd even to think of it, foolish and improbable as a dream is by dinner.
Madeline Miller
#15. One morning, I woke to find Chiron gone. This was not unusual. He often rose before we did, to milk the goats or pick fruits for breakfast. I left the cave so that Achilles
Madeline Miller
#16. A surety rose in me, lodged in my throat. I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
Madeline Miller
#18. As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders.
Madeline Miller
#20. I gaped at the cold shock of his beauty, deep-green eyes, features fine as a girl's. It struck from me a sudden, springing dislike. I had not changed so much, nor so well.
Madeline Miller
#22. Achilles makes a sound like choking. "There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw." His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector's throat.
Madeline Miller
#23. Wealth and reputation were the things our people had always killed for.
Madeline Miller
#24. It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after.
Madeline Miller
#25. Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all.
Madeline Miller
#26. 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.
Madeline Miller
#27. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory ... We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.
Madeline Miller
#28. When I first started studying Greek, one of my absolute favorite parts was realizing that so many English words had these old, secret roots. Learning Greek was like being given a super-power: linguistic x-ray vision.
Madeline Miller
#29. Peleus acknowledged this. "Yet other boys will be envious that you have chosen such a one. What will you tell them?"
"I will tell them nothing." The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. "It is not for them to say what I will do.
Madeline Miller
#30. The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
Madeline Miller
#31. When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.
Madeline Miller
#33. He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?
Madeline Miller
#34. And when he moved it was like watching oil spread across a lake, smooth and fluid, almost vicious
Madeline Miller
#35. I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.
Madeline Miller
#36. This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.
Madeline Miller
#37. I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.
Madeline Miller
#38. 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
#39. 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?
Madeline Miller
#41. My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.
Madeline Miller
#42. Achilles' eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know is in dark or disguise, told myself. I would know it even in madness.
Madeline Miller
#43. I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it."
He smiled. "Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere."
The sun sank below Pelion's ridges, and we were happy.
Madeline Miller
#44. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.
Madeline Miller
#45. And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.
Madeline Miller
#46. He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.
Madeline Miller
#48. Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.
Madeline Miller
#49. Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.
Madeline Miller
#51. He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.
Madeline Miller
#53. Have you no memories?'
I am made of memories.
'Then speak.
Madeline Miller
#55. When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light.
Madeline Miller
#56. Nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.
Madeline Miller
#57. 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.
Madeline Miller
#59. Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.
Madeline Miller
#60. In making Achilles and Patroclus lovers, I wasn't trying to speak for all gay men, just as when I write straight characters, I don't claim to speak for all straight people. My job as an author is to give voice to these very particular characters - these two men, in this time, and in this place
Madeline Miller
#61. His fingers touched the strings and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once.
Madeline Miller
#62. We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
Madeline Miller
#63. I think: this is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: how long do we have?
Madeline Miller
#64. And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.
Madeline Miller
#65. Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. 'If you have to go, you know I will go with you.' We slept.
Madeline Miller
#67. This was a man who moved like the gods were watching: every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector
Madeline Miller
#68. An ugly man, with a face sharp like a weasel and a habit of running a flickering tongue over his lips before he speaks. But most ugly of all are his eyes: blue, bright blue. When people see them, they flinch. Such things are freakish. He is lucky he was not killed at birth.
Madeline Miller
#69. 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
#70. There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.
Madeline Miller
#72. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons.
Madeline Miller
#73. Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.
Madeline Miller
#75. 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
#77. People are people, whatever age they're living in. The circumstances may have changed - we go to war with planes instead of chariots - but experiences of grief, longing, rage and love remain the same.
Madeline Miller
#78. As for the goddess's answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.
Madeline Miller
#79. We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.
Madeline Miller
#80. This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.
Madeline Miller
#81. 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. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright were they dull.
Madeline Miller
#82. The greater the monument, the greater the man. The stone the Greeks quarry for his grave is huge and white, stretching up to the sky. A C H I L L E S, it reads. It will stand for him, and speak to all who pass: he lived and died, and lives again in memory.
Madeline Miller
#83. He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus' wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.
Madeline Miller
#84. When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.
Madeline Miller
#85. There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.
Madeline Miller
#86. The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.
Madeline Miller
#87. The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine.
Madeline Miller
#88. 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.
Madeline Miller
#90. I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. ACHILLES, it reads. And beside it, PATROCLUS.
"Go," she says. "He waits for you.
Madeline Miller
#91. And her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.
Madeline Miller
#93. Our men liked conquest; they did not trust a man who was conquered himself.
Madeline Miller
#94. Our dead come for their vengeance regardless of witnesses
Madeline Miller
#96. Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child.
Madeline Miller
#97. 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?
Madeline Miller
#98. And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don't fucking kill myself of boredom.
Madeline Miller
#99. Achilles' eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. I wish he had let you all die.
Madeline Miller
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