Circe

by Madeline Miller

Rage and grief, thwarted desire, lust, self-pity: these are emotions gods know well. But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.

That old sickening feeling returned: that every moment of my life I had been a fool.

It was a sort of rage, a knife I used upon myself. I did it to prove my skin was still my own. And did I like the answer I found?

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.