Latest Madeline Miller Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders.

  Madeline Miller

  Book, Thinking, Breathing

  Source: www.glamour.com

• People are people, whatever age they're living in. 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

  War, Grief, People

  Source: www.glamour.com

• What's amazing to me is how many of the issues facing women in the ancient world still linger today. Take Odysseus' wife, Penelope, a brilliant, resourceful woman who ends up in a terrible situation: in her husband's absence, she is being held hostage in her own home by men who claim to be courting her. She tries to make them leave, but because she's a woman they refuse, blaming their bad behavior on her desirability.

  Madeline Miller

  Husband, Home, Men

  Source: www.glamour.com

• The very dull truth is that writing love scenes is the same as writing other scenes - your job is to be fully engaged in the character's experience. What does this mean to them? How are they changed by it, or not? I remember being a little nervous, as I am when writing any high-stakes, intense scene (death, sex, grief, joy).

  Madeline Miller

  Jobs, Sex, Grief

  Source: www.glamour.com

• 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. Part of the tragedy of their characters is how much they have to offer - and how little of that they get to realize. Thetis spends the whole novel fighting the limitations placed on her, desperately trying to eke out the best she can from a bad situation. This makes her fierce and terrifying.

  Madeline Miller

  Strong, Character, Fighting

  Source: www.glamour.com

• 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. My job as an author is to give voice to these very particular characters - these two men, in this time, and in this place

  Madeline Miller

  Jobs, Character, Writing

  Source: www.glamour.com

• A part of what makes myths live is their multiplicity, the way different voices retell them in every generation. Homer survives because his poetry was outstanding, yes, but also because he's been passed down by so many by luminaries like Vergil and Ovid, Shakespeare, James Joyce and Margaret Atwood, but also by countless others. I wanted to do my part for these tremendous stories.

  Madeline Miller

  Voice, Different, Generations

  Source: www.glamour.com