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Quote by Madeline Miller, Circe

“Still? I have never understood why helping mortals made Zeus so angry.” “Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?” “A happy one, of course.” “Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.” “But surely,” I said, “you have to reward him eventually. Otherwise, he will stop offering.” “Oh, you would be surprised how long he will go on. But yes, in the end, it’s best to give him something. Then he will be happy again. And you can start over.” “So this is how Olympians spend their days. Thinking of ways to make men miserable.”

Quote by Madeline Miller, Circe

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Madeline Miller, Circe

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“The Isle of Pines was Circe's isle, with white marble columns here and there in the dark, green, and pirates would be dueling with a flash of clashing swords and a flash of recklessly smiling white teeth. The Gulf, like the Caribbean, is haunted by the ghosts of the old buccaneers. Tampico, to Pete, wasn't the industrial shipping port his father knew. It had palaces and parrots of many colors, and winding white roads. It was an Arabian Nights city, with robed magicians wandering the streets, benign most of the time, but with gnarled hands like tree-roots that could weave spells. Manoel, his father, could have told him a different story, for Manoel had shipped once under sail, in the old days, before he settled down to a fisherman's life in Cabrillo. But Manoel didn't talk a great deal. Men talk to men, not to boys, and that was why Pete didn't learn as much as he might have from the sun-browned Portuguese who went out with the fishing fleets. He got his knowledge out of books, and strange books they were, and strange knowledge. ("Before I Wake...")”

KnowledgeBooksCaribbeanCirceGulf Of MexicoArabian Nights
Book:Masters of Horror
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“The stories abounded, both recounting these cross-continental journeys and perhaps inspiring them – how Hellenic Jason gathered his Argonauts together (including Augeas, whose vast stables Herakles would be forced to clean) for adventure and profit, how he stopped off along the Bosphorus and discovered the land of the rising sun before other Greek heroes headed to Asia in search of Helen, Troy and glory. In the Homeric epics we hear of Jason travelling east where he tangles with Medea of Colchis, her aunt Circe and the feisty Amazon tribe. Lured by the promise of gold (early and prodigious metalworking did indeed take place in the region – perhaps sparking the Greek idea that the East was ‘rich in gold’) and then detained by the potions and poisons of Princess Medea, Jason succeeded in penetrating the Caucasus – a land which, in the Greek mind, wept with both peril and promise. It was here that Prometheus was chained to a rock with iron rivets for daring to steal fire from the gods. Archaeology east of Istanbul demonstrates how myth grazes history.”

CirceIstanbulPrometheusGreek MythMedeaHelen Of TroyCross Cultural ExchangesCross Continental JourneysHistory Meets Myth
Book:Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
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“Обикалях вече земята от сто поколения, но в душата си бях все още дете. Ярост, мъка, потиснато желание, сласт и самосъжаление - боговете познават добре тези чувства. Но вината, срамът, угризението и раздвоението на чувствата са ни непознати и ние ги учим стъпка по стъпка.”

CirceMadeline MillerЦирцея
Author:Madeline Miller, Circe
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“As a young man, I was startled by the popularity of these “misogynistic” portrayals of women in literary works to begin with Nana, Miss Julie, Ulysses, Women, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Now, with some experience in life, I believe that it was fueled more by the true nature of men as arrogant, selfish, unfeeling swine in relationships with women rather than breaking down conventional idealization of women BS. If Circe is still alive, the continents would sink in the blue deep oceans under the weight of the pigs.”

WomenMen And WomenCirceUlyssesMysogynyMysogynisticArrogant MenMiss Julia
Author:Vinko Vrbanic
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“Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different, and so when you get right down to it, the Greek conceptions of star signs as related to birth dates are grossly inaccurate for today's day and age. It's called the Line of Procession: back then the sun didn't set in Taurus, but in Gemini. A September 24 birthday didn't mean you were a Libra, but a Virgo. And there was a thirteenth zodiac constellation, Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer, which rose between Sagittarius and Scorpio for only four days. The reason it's all off kilter? The earth's axis wobbles. Life isn't nearly as stable as we want it to be.”

AstronomyConstellations
Book:My Sister's Keeper
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