BOOK STARTERS VOL.56   CIRCE   MADELINE MILLER
â But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. â
â He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. â
â Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. â
â It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a momentâs carelessness.  â
â If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. â
â 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. â
â I cannot bear this world a moment longer. â
â I have a better idea. I will do as I please. â
â All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. â
â You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. â
â When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. â
â When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. â
â But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. â
â I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. â
â This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. â
â You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. â
â Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. â
â If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. â
â You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. â
â Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. â
â I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape Iâve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. â
â I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my lifeâs precariousness, its thready breath. â
â Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. â
â Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. â
â The truth is, men make terrible pigs. â
â My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. â
â This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. â
â Witches are not so delicate. â
â Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. â
â I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. â