Natalie Haynes > Quotes

“When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“But this is a women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“It does hurt, I whispered. It should hurt. She isn't a footnote, she's a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialised as much as any other person.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Men's deaths are epic, women's deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don't become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don't begin and end on a battlefield.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“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, A Thousand Ships

“Why would anyone love a monster?' asked Perseus.
'Who are you to decide who is worthy of love?' said Hermes.
'I mean, I wasn't...'
'And who are you to decide who is a monster?' added the messenger god.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind: Medusa's Story

“Who could love a coward?' She had once heard a woman say. Laodamia knew the answer. Someone for whom the alternative is loving a corpse.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Sing, Muse," he said, and I have sung. I have sung of armies and I have sung of men. I have sung of gods and monsters, I have sung of stories and lies. I have sung of death and of life, of joy and of pain. I have sung of life after death. And I have sung of the women, the women in the shadows. I have sung of the forgotten, the ignored, the untold.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“When women take up space, there is less available for men. But it means we get a whole story instead of half of one.”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“There’s comfort in stories which don’t change, even the sad ones.”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“Waiting is the cruellest thing I have ever endured. Like bereavement, but with no certainty.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“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? Gorgons are both these things, certainly, although Medusa wasn’t always. Can a monster be beautiful if it is still terrifying? Perhaps it depends on how you experience fear and judge beauty.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“And the monster? Who is she? She is what happens when someone cannot be saved.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“And if history has taught us anything, it is that women making a noise – whether speaking or shouting – tend to be viewed as intrinsically disruptive.”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“She had already learned that the worst dreams were not the ones where the flaming walls were crashing down on you, or where armed men were chasing you, or where your beloved menfolk were dying before your eyes. They were the ones when your husband lived again, when your son still smiled, when your daughter looked forward to her wedding.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Because the Spartan king had lost his queen, a hundred queens lost their kings.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“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, Stone Blind

“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, Stone Blind

“Imagine being a god, she thought, and still needing to tell everyone how impressive you were.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“He is learning that in any war, the victors may be destroyed as completely as the vanquished. They still have their lives, but they have given up everything else in order to keep them. They sacrifice what they do not realize they have until they have lost it. And so the man who can win the war can only rarely survive the peace.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“You aren’t monsters,’ Medusa said. ‘Neither are you. Who decides what is a monster?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Medusa. ‘Men, I suppose.’ ‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our teeth, our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“Every myth contains multiple timelines within itself: the time in which it is set, the time it is first told, and every retelling afterwards. Myths may be the home of the miraculous, but they are also mirrors of us. Which version of a story we choose to tell, which characters we place in the foreground, which ones we allow to fade into the shadows: these reflect both the teller and the reader, as much as they show the characters of the myth. We have made space in our storytelling to rediscover women who have been lost or forgotten. They are not villains, victims, wives and monsters: they are people.”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“Mankind was just so impossibly heavy. There were so many of them and they showed no sign of halting their endless reproduction. Stop, she wanted to cry out, please stop. You cannot all fit on the space between the oceans, you cannot grow enough food on the land beneath the mountains. You cannot graze enough livestock on the grasses around your cities, you cannot build enough homes on the peaks of your hills. You must stop, so that I can rest beneath your ever-increasing weight. She wept fat tears as she heard the cries of newborn children. No more, she said to herself. No more.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“For my mum, who has always thought that a woman with an axe was more interesting than a princess”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“Because really, how many cannibalistic giants can one Greek plausibly meet as he sails the open seas?”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“heroism is something that can reside in all of us, particularly if circumstances push it to the fore. It doesn’t belong to men, any more than the tragic consequences of war belong to women. Survivors, victims, perpetrators: these roles are not always separate. People can be wounded and wounding at the same time, or at different times in the same life.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“But these myths are full of violence and we should at least ask why it is the violence against women that is removed in order to make our heroes uncomplicated adventurers.”
― Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

“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, Stone Blind

“I feel like becoming the monster he made.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind