The Song of Achilles Quotes

• “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” ― Madeline Miller

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

• “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

• “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” ― Madeline Miller

• “When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.” ― Madeline Miller

• “We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.” ― Madeline Miller

• “I am made of memories.” ― Madeline Miller

• “He smiled, and his face was like the sun.” ― Madeline Miller

• “That is — your friend?”

• “Philtatos,” Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.” ― Madeline Miller

• “There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” ― Madeline Miller

• “He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Name one hero who was happy.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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

• “We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.” ― Madeline Miller

• “I feel like I could eat the world raw.” ― Madeline Miller

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

• “Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”  ― Madeline Miller

• “There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?” ― Madeline Miller

• “Bring him back to me,’ he told them.” ― Madeline Miller

• “There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.” ― Madeline Miller

• “We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.” ― Madeline Miller

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

• “Have you no memories?”
• “I am made of memories.”

• “Then speak.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.” ― Madeline Miller

• “It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after.” ― Madeline Miller

• “You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Go,” She says. “He waits for you.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright were they dull.” ― Madeline Miller

• “This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.” ― Madeline Miller

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

• “I am air and thought and can do nothing.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me?” ― Madeline Miller

• “What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory… We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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 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

• “She wants you to be a god,” I told him.

• “I know.” His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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

• “He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.” ― Madeline Miller

• “He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?” ― Madeline Miller

• “I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it.”

• He smiled. “Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.”

• The sun sank below Pelion’s ridges, and we were happy.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all.” ― Madeline Miller

• “When he speaks at last, his voice is weary and defeated. He doesn’t know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won’t light.” ― Madeline Miller

• “I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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

• “Later, Achilles pressed close for a final, drowsy whisper. ‘If you have to go, you know I will go with you.’ We slept.” ― Madeline Miller

• “I think: this is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: how long do we have?” ― Madeline Miller

• “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

• “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

• “As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.” ― Madeline Miller

• “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

• “There is no honour in betraying your friends.” ― Madeline Miller

• “The greater the monument, the greater the man. The stone the Greeks quarry for his grave is huge and white, stretching up to the sky. A C H I L L E S, it reads. It will stand for him, and speak to all who pass: he lived and died, and lives again in memory.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat.” ― Madeline Miller
• “. . .nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.” ― Madeline Miller

• “Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.” ― Madeline Miller

• “And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. 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. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull.” ― Madeline Miller

• “This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods. But how is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. Would you make him another Pyrrhus? Let the stories of him be something more.” ― Madeline Miller
• “The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons.” ― Madeline Miller
• “They leaned towards him, like flowers to the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all.” ― Madeline Miller
• “He did not fear ridicule, he had never known it.” ― Madeline Miller
• “The last thing I think is: Achilles.” ― Madeline Miller
• “This and this and this.” ― Madeline Miller
• “I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.” ― Madeline Miller
• “There is this too.” His hand was ceaseless now. “I know I have told you of this.”
• I closed my eyes. “Tell me again,” I said.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.” ― Madeline Miller
• “The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.” ― Madeline Miller
• “The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.” ― Madeline Miller
• “For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?” ― Madeline Miller
• “But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart? ” ― Madeline Miller
• “Even here, behind the darkness of my eyelids, I cannot name the thing I hope for.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, were the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. The sudden swoop of my stomach, the coursing anger. I was like a fish eyeing the hook.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.” ― Madeline Miller
• “The word I use is hubris. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Maybe her gods are kinder than ours, and she will find rest” ― Madeline Miller
• “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
• “Will you tell me who hurt you?
• I imagine saying, ‘You.’ But that is nothing more than childishness.” ― Madeline Miller
• “He waits for you.” ― Madeline Miller
• “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
• “He is such a flood, I thought” ― Madeline Miller
• “I wish he had let you all die” ― Madeline Miller

• “The never-ending ache of love and sorrow.” ― Madeline Miller

• “He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Strange that such a small kindness felt like grace.” ― Madeline Miller
• “Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.” ― Madeline Miller
• “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.” ― Madeline Miller
• “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 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
• “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

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