14
“Word came that one of my uncles was going to be punished.”
19
“Prometheus dangled from them, his arms drawn taut, his bones showing knobs through the skin.
Even I, who knew so little of discomfort, felt the ache of it.”
39
“I drank down every story like a whirlpool sucks down waves,
though I could hardly understand half of what they meant, poverty and toil and human terror.”
43
“That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young,
we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”
81
“I stepped into those woods and my life began.”
83
“I had a little pride, as I have said, and that was good. More would have been fatal.”
84
“For a hundred generations, I have walked the world drowsy and dull,
idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. …
Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow.”
99
“She said that a man named Odysseus, born from my blood, will come one day to your island.”
106
“How could such variation endure, such endless iterations of mind and faces? Did the earth not go mad?“
126
“I don’t know. Pasiphaë seems to believe it can. But even so it is the child of the white bull.”
132
“For three seasons of the year, the spell will keep its appetite at bay.
But every harvest it will return, and must be fed.”
138
“Have you heard what they’ve decided to name the thing? The Minotaur.
Ten ships go out with the announcement at noon, and ten more will go out tomorrow.”
158
“She fell in love with him, and to save his life smuggled him a sword and
taught him the way through the Labyrinth, which she had learned from Daedalus himself.”
213
“Ajax and Agamemnon would have battered at Troy’s locked gates until they died,
but it was I who thought of the trick of the giant horse,
and I spun the story that convinced the Trojans to pull it inside.”
218
“He gave me besides a great bag holding all of the contrary winds, so they could not trouble us.”
286
“Mortals like to name such natural wonders changeless, eternal,
but the island was always changing, that was the truth, flowing endlessly through its generations.”
326
“He will have implied that his father was lost in the war.
That he came home changed, too soaked in death and grief to live as an ordinary man.”
372
“For the first time in centuries, I was not lashed to that flood of misery and grief.
No more souls would walk to the underworld written with my name.”
384
“I have aged. When I look in my polished bronze mirror there are lines upon my face. …
But I do not wish myself back. Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.”