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