Circe –– Madeline Miller

#book  #fiction  #mythology  

Notes:

  • "The are each different, the only thing they share is death."
  • "That is one thing gods and mortals share: when we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world."
  • "This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh."
  • "Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow."
  • "I would come to know this type of man, jealous of his little power, to whom I was only a woman."
  • "Most gods and mortals have lives that are tied to nothing; they tangle and wend now here, now there, according to no set plan. But then there are those who wear their destinies like nooses, whose lives run straight as planks, however they try to twist. It is there that our prophets may see."
  • "Artist, creator, inventor, the greatest the world had known. Timidity creates nothing." #creativity
  • "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."
  • "A golden cage is still a cage."
  • "A bitter #paradox: to keep his son, he had to lose him."
  • "A door that did not open at his knock was a novelty in its own right, and a kind of relief as well. All the world confessed to him, he confessed to me."
  • "I touched the thought like a bruise, testing its ache." [[mind-body]]
  • "He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none."
  • "I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands." #religion