Circe

by Madeline Miller

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom.

You will never get the whole truth from her. She has as many coils as a snake,