Circe

by Madeline Miller

Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

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

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

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. 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.