ruby > ruby's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

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

“I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“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 it means to be alive.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“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

“You are wise,” he said.

“If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A golden cage is still a cage.”
― 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

“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

“When he was gone, would I be like Achilles, wailing over his lost lover Patroclus? I tried to picture myself running up and down the beaches, tearing at my hair, cradling some scrap of old tunic he had left behind. Crying out for the loss of half my soul.

I could not see it. That knowledge brought its own sort of pain.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I had no right to claim him, I know it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure not to dishonor me."

"I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“They were sick with longing for their hands, those appendages men use to mitigate the world.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

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

“He saw me watching and rubbed self-consciously at his calloused hands. “I know I am ugly to you.” No, I thought. My grandfather’s halls are filled with shining nymphs and muscled river-gods, but I would rather gaze on you than any of them.”
― 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

“Often those men in most need hate most to be grateful, and will strike at you just to feel whole again.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Where did one’s power lie in a world that stripped it from you, over and over again? How could we reclaim it when the dominant forces dangled it above our heads, shouting: Only the strong survive?”
― Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat

“That was the way of the world: if you were a woman, then you had a job to do, and that was to pretend to love everyone else walking all over your body, leaving imprints on your face. You were supposed to crave it, to beg for more.”
― Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat

“Physical abuse versus emotional neglect? Some might say the neglect is worse. Because it negates your very existence.”
― Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat

“This was how it always went. Museums overlooked colonialism, conquest, a history of blood, until it was laid in front of them, until violence was met with violence.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“Loss was the hesitation in his voice when he spoke his mother tongue, the myths he did not know, a childhood that felt so vast and
alien from his parents' that he did not know how to cross it.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“How to be the
daughter she was supposed to be, her parents’ American Dream. How to
untangle the parts of her that were Chinese and the parts of her that were
American, how both so often felt like neither.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“I want to think that I'm Chinese and American both, but depending on the country, I feel like I'm not enough of either.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“For so long, the past had been a wound still open. Now he could run his finger along the mark those years had left. Scars were nothing but tissue, keratin, a reminder of what the body could endure.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

“We’re children of the diaspora,” Will said. He had grown up in the US, knew that no matter how much he wanted it to be, China would never be home to him. “All we’ve ever known is loss.”
― Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief