Sebastian Van > Sebastian's Quotes

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He smiled, and his face was like the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“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.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

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

“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.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“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.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“He was another knife I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Achilles' eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Circe, he says, it will be all right.

It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would have no need of her. I did not plan to live after he was gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A surety rose in me, lodged in my throat. I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He collects my ashes himself, though this is a women's duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks.
'When I am dead, I charged you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He knew, but it was not enough. The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles