More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She is known to the men as a hunter. Someone on Ithaca has to be. She is known to the women as something more.
Beauty is a whim, it changes as easily as the tide.
That is how there came to be three queens in Greece, voices uttering prayers that no poet-prince, husband-king nor king-above will ever hear.
I was a queen of women once, before my husband bound me with chains and made me a queen of wives.
No songs are sung of a life lived quietly, of a man and a woman growing old in contentment.
Which deity is most appropriate when it takes the blessing of us all to keep a kingdom together?
What she doesn’t understand is why, being the way it is, society is so insufferably stupid, run by flaming idiots.
The storm may bend your back, but only you can straighten it again.
“This is the world we live in. We are not heroes. We do not choose to be great; we have no power over our destinies. The scraps of freedom that we have are to pick between two poisons, to make the least bad decision we can, knowing that there is no outcome that will not leave us bruised, bloody on the floor.
the stories that will live for ever are of the lost ones, the fearful ones, who through bitter hardship and despair find hope, find strength – find their way home.
And like the Trojans, all of Greece will rise up and destroy you for your impudence. This is not a threat. This is what Troy shows us. This is what my father, king of the Greeks, taught me. This is what my brother knows.”
Every immortal and mortal may say ‘yes, let us be wise’ and yet turn their faces away when the best course is set before them. It is . . . troubling. How is it that we can know the most intelligent way to act, yet choose not to do it?”
