Elizabeth

“I do not touch his arm nor kiss his cheek nor run my fingers across his brow as he leaves the women to their labours, for I am Athena, and my love is marble within my chest.”
― Claire North, The Last Song of Penelope

“I do not expect you to understand these things. Even my kindred gods barely manage to think more than a century ahead, and save Apollo their prophecies are flawed, crippingly naive. I am no prophet, but rather a scholar of all things, and it is clear that all things wither and change, even the harvest of Demeter's field. Long before the Titans wake, I foresee a time when the names of the gods - even great Zeus himself - are little more than jokes and children's rhymes. I see a world in which mortals make themselves gods in our places, elevate their own to our divine status - an astounding arrogance, a logical conclusion - though their gods will be vastly less skilled at the shaping of the weather.”
― Claire North, The Last Song of Penelope

“Slowly she raises her eyes to heaven. Then out loud, without looking upon me, she spits these words: "Gods. Kings. Heroes of Greece." There is something she wants to address to these ideas, something complex, rich, bitter. She looks for the words, and can only find these: "Fuck you all.”
― Claire North, The Last Song of Penelope

“There is nothing so dangerous as the need to be loved, as the desire to be seen, to be held, to be known in all your failings and loved despite them all. Nothing as heart-cracking, as soul-sheering as to love and be loved and be seen to laugh and seen to weep and known to be afraid and so away with it, let it be gone!”
― Claire North, The Last Song of Penelope