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Quote by Madeline Miller

Work

The Song of Achilles

An adaptation of the Iliad, this novel explores the relationship between Achilles, the legendary warrior, and his close friend Patroclus, set against the backdrop of the Trojan War. more

Author

Madeline Miller
Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller is an American novelist known for her modern interpretations of Greek mythology. Born on July 24, 1978, she graduated from Princeton University and later earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her works, 'The Song of Achilles' and 'Circe', have been widely acclaimed by readers. more

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“Helen All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.”

“They're power-hungry, the mundane said of the magical people. They're immoral, people said, and they're scary. Playing with the dark arts could plunge me into evil. I'd be pulled toward depravity. Blasphemy would begin to seem like truth, bad like good, God like Satan. It had happened to people through the centuries, they said. And they were right. All that did happen.”

“There's a widespread notion that children are open, that the truth about their inner selves just seeps out of them. That's all wrong. No one is more covert than a child, and no one has greater cause to be that way. It's a response to a world that is always using a tin-opener on them to see what they have inside, just in case it ought to be replaced with a more useful type of tinned foodstuff.”