Song of Achilles Quotes

Here are the most famous The Song of Achilles Quotes that will blow your mind. Madeline Miller’s book The Song of Achilles was published in 2011. It is an adaption of Homer’s Iliad recounted from Patroclus’ point of view during the Greek Heroic Age. From their first meeting until their adventures during the Trojan War, the narrative explores Patroclus and Achilles’ friendship, with a special focus on their romantic bond. In 2012, The Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize for Fiction.

All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet. – Patroclus

Our goddess of the moon is gifted with magic, with power over the dead. She could banish the dreams if she wished. She did not. – Patroclus

The presence of the other boys did not comfort me; our dead come for their vengeance regardless of witnesses. – Patroclus

We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both. – Patroclus

We reached for each other and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room loving him in silence. – Patroclus

My mother told you the rest of the prophecy. And you think that no one but me can kill Hector. And you think to steal time from the Fates? – Achilles

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Kill me. It will not bring him back. He was worth 10 of you. Ten! And you sent him to his death. – Briseis

Our men liked conquest; they did not trust a man who was conquered himself. – Patroclus

Until this moment I had been a prince, expected and announced. Now I was negligible. – Patroclus

I feel like I could eat the world raw. – Achilles

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. – Patroclus

Song of Achilles Quotes He Is Half My Soul

Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free. – Patroclus

I am air and thought and can do nothing. – Patroclus

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. – Patroclus

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. We are men only, a brief flare of the torch. – Odysseus

The greater the monument, the greater the man. – Patroclus

Perhaps he simply assumed—a bitterness of habit, of the boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder. – Patroclus

I began to surprise Achilles, calling out to these men as we walked through the camp. I was always gratified at how they would raise a hand in return, pointing to a scar that had healed over well. – Patroclus

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The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. – Patroclus

There is no honor in betraying your friends. – Patroclus

As for the goddess’s answer, I did not care. I would not need her. I did not plan to live after he was gone. – Patroclus

If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But none seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. – Patroclus

He collects my ashes himself, though this is a woman’s duty. He puts them in a golden urn, the finest in our camp, and turns to the watching Greeks. – Patroclus

Those seconds, half seconds, that the line of our gaze connected, was the only moment in my day that I felt anything at all. – Patroclus

Song of Achilles Quotes about Love

We were like gods at the dawning of the world and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other. – Patroclus

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. – Patroclus

You are the one who made him go. – Briseis

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We had been silent. We were 14, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are 27, they still feel too hard. – Patroclus

We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence. – Patroclus

Dear gods, I think, let him not hate me. – Patroclus

Bring him back to me. – Achilles

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. – Patroclus

‘I wish I had known,’ I said, the first day when he showed it to me. – Patroclus

I don’t think I’ve ever told you how I like it. – Achilles

But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart. – Patroclus

Tears came and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed. – Patroclus

The Song of Achilles Quotes Analysis

There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. – Achilles

There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. – Patroclus

I wish he had let you all die. – Achilles

But most ugly of all are his eyes—blue, bright blue. When people see them, they flinch. Such things are freakish. He is lucky he was not killed at birth. – Patroclus

He did not fear ridicule, he had never known it. – Patroclus

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But what if he is your friend? Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger? – Achilles

Nothing could eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity. – Patroclus

My mind is filled with a cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, and floods. – Patroclus

And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. – Odysseus

Son of Laertes, I do not remember inviting you to speak. – Menoetius

I hope that Hector kills you. – Briseis

Do you think I do not hope the same? – Achilles

I was not invited. I interrupted. – Ajax

Well, why should I kill him? He’s done nothing to me. – Achilles

Song of Achilles Quotes Name One Hero Who Was Happy

No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from. – Chiron

But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. – Odysseus

He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth. – Patroclus

I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. – Patroclus

Maybe her gods are kinder than ours, and she will find rest. – Patroclus

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He had light enough to make heroes of them all. – Odysseus

Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere. – Achilles

The memories come and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. – Patroclus

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. – Patroclus

It was all she said, but I felt the shiver go through the men around me. Even as a child I felt it, and I marveled at the power of this woman who, though veiled, could electrify a room. – Patroclus

He was watching me closely, reading my face over and over, like a priest searching the auguries for an answer. I could see the slight line on his forehead that meant utmost concentration. – Patroclus

He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important? – Chiron

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 was they dull. – Patroclus

For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? – Patroclus

The Song of Achilles Quotes I Would Know Him

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. – Madeline Miller

It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once. – Madeline Miller

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead. – Madeline Miller

In the darkness, two shadows reached 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

People are people, whatever age they’re living. The circumstances may have changed—we go to war with planes instead of chariots, but experiences of grief, longing, rage, and love remain the same. – Madeline Miller

In making Achilles and Patroclus lovers, I wasn’t trying to speak for all gay men, just as when I write straight characters, I don’t claim to speak for all straight people. – Madeline Miller

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A part of what makes myths live is their multiplicity, the way different voices retell them in every generation. – Madeline Miller

Life for women in ancient Greece was hard—you had to fight for every inch of ground you got. Both Thetis and Briseis are strong, passionate women and in another time and place their lives would have been very different. – Madeline Miller

Homer survives because his poetry was outstanding, yes, but also because he’s been passed down by so many luminaries like Vergil and Ovid, Shakespeare, James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, but also by countless others. I wanted to do my part for these tremendous stories. – Madeline Miller