Metamorphica Quotes

“I lift up my voices and shatter the night with my emptiness, my heartlessness. With nothing now to bind me, the world is a hunting ground.

- Scylla”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“Is he the kind to talk in riddles, or love someone who would?”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“Zeus, Poseidon and Death were brothers. After defeating the giants they had the disposal of the world. Zeus, Poseidon and Death met to settle the limits of their kingdoms. Zeus said, “I claim the islands in the seas.” Poseidon said, “Take the islands. I claim the seas around them.” Death said, “Take the islands and the seas. I claim the emptiness within them.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“Music comes from deep within the wood, high and wild.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“Gold, they say, has no history,”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“In the end, there are other things: The first light of dawn. The rhythms of the year. A wind touching the sea. A kindness to a broken stranger.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“hanging by a thread, and then he laughed in my face. I am the terror of heaven. Swift thinking. Giant-breaker. Queen of citadels. Deluded in judgment. Risible to men. Worthless to heroes. Widely despicable. I thought of the vast emptiness of the sea, of mountains undulating endlessly, of the silences there, of the darkness settling over the world. I could have killed him in an instant—he’s fragile, as all men are fragile, though I think he doesn’t know it, but instead I embraced him, and kissed him, once, and didn’t kiss him again, and then I vanished.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“He valued eloquence, but my speech came out in a rush. I offered him everything. He listened, chin on hand, nodding, looking away from me, like I was explaining a plan he needed to remember. When I finished there was a pause, and my life seemed to be hanging by a thread, and then he laughed in my face.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“In a tide pool I saw the tension in my jaw and the battle-light in my eyes—I had the look of a raptor about to dive—so I laid down my arms and armor and stood there in linen, groping for sweetness. I was all elbows and knees, naked without my sword, but embarrassment would do better than a murder-face. Penelope scowled up at me from the water, then Helen, and, for an instant, Aphrodite, but even in war there’s a time for honesty. I put an orchid in my hair, trying to get it to stay with fingers that had turned thick and clumsy; there must, I thought, be an art to it.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“Troy would have fallen within a year, if I’d let it, but a stone, a fog, an order unheard can make nothing of near-victory, and Odysseus remained with me on the long beach between the looming battlements and the sea. I’d never been so happy. * * *”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“He was always in my eyes. I stayed near him through the war, as a gull over the waves, a soldier in the line, a heat mirage on white sand. I turned arrows, spooked horses, crumbled his enemies’ vertebrae in my hand. Nestor saw me, and might have known me, but, wise with years, said nothing.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“I welcomed each night, and all the nights blurred together, and she was always close by. I thought those nights would never end, and somehow at the same time that we’d leave one day and live together, far away, in a quiet house by a river, and never come back to the city.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“They go to the temple of Zeus the Traveler and find their old guest waiting. “We’re done,” they say, “and ready for the end,” but their guest shakes his head and says, “Death separates, and I promised that you’d never be apart.” Baucis says, “Is there no escape, then? Are we prisoners of the world?” but he smiles at them and kisses them both once, and later the citizens find two trees growing in the temple courtyard, their trunks twined together, and their leaves neither faded nor fell as generations slept in their shade, their branches thickened, and their roots reached deeper.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica

“I hadn't expected to get older, had thought people aged because they made a mistake.”
― Zachary Mason, Metamorphica