The Song of Achilles QUOTES

181 " Maybe her gods are kinder than ours, and she will find rest "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

182 " He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus' wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

183 " I turn to look at him. His face is smooth, without the blotches and spots that have begun to afflict the other boys. His features are drawn with a firm hand; nothing awry or sloppy, nothing too large—all precise, cut with the sharpest of knives. And yet the effect itself is not sharp. He turns and finds me looking at him. “What?” he says. “Nothing.” I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyacinths we had walked through, their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to. I cannot describe it. It is sweet, but not just. It is strong but not too strong. Something like almond, but that still is not right. Sometimes, after we have wrestled, my own skin smells like it. He puts a hand down, to lean against. The muscles in his arms curve softly, appearing and disappearing as he moves. His eyes are deep green on mine. My pulse jumps, for no reason I can name. He has looked at me a thousand thousand times, but there is something different in this gaze, an intensity I do not know. My mouth is dry, and I can hear the sound of my throat as I swallow. He watches me. It seems that he is waiting. I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do. I lean forward and our lips land clumsily on each other. They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen. I can taste his mouth—hot and sweet with honey from dessert. My stomach trembles, and a warm drop of pleasure spreads beneath my skin. More. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

184 " He waits for you. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

185 " He is such a flood, I thought "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

186 " In the silence, I can hear Phoinix’s breaths, labored with the exertion of speaking so long. I do not dare to speak or move; I am afraid that someone will see the thought that is plain on my face. It was not honor that made Meleager fight, or his friends, or victory, or revenge, or even his own life. It was Cleopatra, on her knees before him, her face streaked with tears. Here is Phoinix’s craft: Cleopatra, Patroclus. Her name built from the same pieces as mine, only reversed. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

187 " I wish he had let you all die "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

188 " I do not know this man, I think. He is no one I have ever seen before. My rage towards him is hot as blood. I will never forgive him. I imagine tearing down our tent, smashing the lyre, stabbing myself in the stomach and bleeding to death. I want to see his face broken with grief and regret. I want to shatter the cold mask of stone that has slipped down over the boy I knew. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

189 " My consolation is that we will be together in the underworld. That we will meet again there, if not in this life. I would not wish to be there without her. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

190 " ...all the grace I saw then was his own: simple, unadorned, glorious. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

191 " Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

192 " No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

193 " I could have told him more, of the dreams that left me bleary and bloodshot, the almost-screams that scraped my throat as I swallowed them down. The way the stars turned and turned through the night above my unsleeping eyes. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

194 " Strange that such a small kindness felt like grace. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

195 " Success in such a war as this comes only through men sewn to a single purpose, funnelled to a single spear thrust rather than a thousand needle-pricks. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

196 " At first it is strange. I am used to keeping him from her, to hoarding him for myself. But the memories well up like springwater, faster than I can hold them back. They do not come as words, but like dreams, rising as scent from the rain-wet earth. This, I say. This and this. The way his hair looked in summer sun. His face when he ran. His eyes, solemn as an owl at lessons. This and this and this. So many moments of happiness, crowding forward. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

197 " Have you no more memories?' I am made of memories. The memories come, and come. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

198 " The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

199 " It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles

200 " I learned to sleep during the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again. "

― Madeline Miller , The Song of Achilles