Circe Quotes

Death’s Brother is the name that poets give to sleep. For most men those dark hours are a reminder of the stillness that waits at the end of days.

He was not so easy and even as he pretended. Living with him was like standing beside the sea. Each day a different color, a different foam-capped height, but always the same restless intensity pulling towards the horizon.

“When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

courage is not a matter of age, but true-made spirits

This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun.

The grudges of gods are as deathless as their flesh.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.

He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.

...I found a new thought in myself. I am embarrassed to tell it, so rudimentary it seems, like an infant’s discovery that her hand is her own. But that is what I was then, an infant. The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?

I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.

I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.

The words slid into me, smooth as a polished knife.

“Sweet son," I said "you are right, this world is a wild and terrible place, and worth shouting at. But you are safe now, and all of us need to sleep. Will you let us have a little peace?”

This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

I had felt untouchable, filled with teeth and power.