Christing > Christing's Quotes

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You are wise,” he said.

“If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The truth is, men make terrible pigs.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Witches are not so delicate.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A golden cage is still a cage.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It's not fair," I said. "It cannot be."

"Those are two different things," my grandmother said.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Sorcery cannot be taught. You find it yourself, or you do not.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure not to dishonor me."

"I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Amusement flashed in his eyes. I had fed off that look once, when I had been starving and thought such crumbs a feast.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Transformation touched only bodies, not minds.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“He liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone. My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I had no right to claim him, I know it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, Prometheus had told me, the story they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke. Meanwhile every petty and useless god would go on sucking down the bright air until the stars went dark.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe