Jaida Jones > Jaida's Quotes

“It seemed odd no one had thought of it before but in general there is no accounting for the bovine stupidity of mankind.”
― Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey

“Death finally comes, usually in the evening, when something in the raconteur fades out for good and in the midst of his story his eyes fix on the horizon and he trails off into silence, thinking of nothing. For this reason the Phaeacians consider silence an act of kindness, as sacred as guest friendship, a grant of repose to a distant stranger.”
― Zachary Mason

“A long time from now someone unknown to me will stand on the white plain where I now stand. He will speak a different language and the mountains in the distance may have been ground down but there are certain constants that will reliably inform his life -- kings like great trees whose roots are watered in ignorance, men who come to war reluctantly only to discover they have the souls of jackals, and fortresses like mountains, as immovable and inevitable. I anticipate that a flash of intuition will make him look at the tumulus or crater or clamorous sprawling city where Troy once stood and intuit how many men once bent their minds toward its destruction.”
― Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey

“As their song crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that the world, which I had considered the province of meaningless chances, a mad dance of atoms, was as orderly as the hexagons in the honeycombs I had just crushed into wax and that behind everything, from Helen's weaving to Circe's mountain to Scylla's death, was a subtle pattern, an order of the most compelling lucidity, but hidden from me, a code I could never crack.”
― Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey

“One might have supposed that the true act of love was to lie together and talk.”
― Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven

“In hatred is love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”
― Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo

“I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King.
And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.”
― Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

“At the stair-foot Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not by calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed. Now, when he came down the stairs with a shut mouth and blue lines under his eyes, Hephaistion received some mute signal he understood, and fell into step beside him.”
― Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven

“Clouds of black birds rose up wailing and screaming, like the thoughts of my heart.”
― Mary Renault

“I saw death come for you, and I had no philosophy.”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

“It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.”
― Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

“Hephaistion had known for many ages that if a god should offer him one gift in all his lifetime, he would choose this. Joy hit him like a lightning-bolt.”
― Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven

“Speak for me, Nikeratos. Someone's soul is always listening." Someone's always is, I suppose, if one only knew. Plato never forgot it.”
― Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo

“Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you.”
― Salman Rushdie