The Song Of Achilles ♥ Favourite Book Quotes

Kindle Notes & Highlights:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

“Name one hero who was happy.” “I can’t.” “I know. They never let you be famous and happy.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret.” “Tell me.” I loved it when he was like this. “I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to his. “Swear it.” “Why me?” “Because you’re the reason. Swear it.” “I swear it,” I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. “I swear it,” he echoed. We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned. “I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

“Achilles does not regard me.” Her voice trembled a little. “Even though I bear his child and am his wife. Do you know why this is so?” It was a child’s question, like why the rain falls or why the sea’s motion never ceases. I felt older than her, though I was not.

When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

THAT NIGHT I could not stop thinking of it: Briseis’ and my child. I saw stumbling legs, and dark hair and the mother’s big eyes. I saw us by the fire, Briseis and I, and the baby, playing with some bit of wood I had carved. Yet there was an emptiness to the scene, an ache of absence. Where was Achilles? Dead? Or had he never existed? I could not live in such a life.

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”

“Will you come with me?” he asked. 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. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

“What has Hector ever done to me?”

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