The Odyssey Quotes

Circe I didn't turn your men into anything! Look at them. This is what they are. Look at them! Beasts!

Penelope Promise me you will come back.

Odysseus The power of the sacrifice is in the cost of the person making it.

Penelope The structure's nothing. Without people's respect for its meaning.

Penelope I don’t want Odysseus’s song, I want Odysseus!

Penelope Love's not a sacrifice.

Odysseus Why can't gods speak in ways we understand?

Athena Who doesn't understand thunder? Fire? A child's smile? A good harvest?

Odysseus Fortune favors the brave.

Tiresias Your men don't want you to defy the gods. But the gods say only you make it home.

Odysseus Then I defy the gods.

Odysseus The clearest view of a man is from below.

Odysseus After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home. Not even me.

Sinon If I never make it home, take this back to my father. Tell him everything I did. Odysseus! Feel free to add some stuff.

Eurylochus What was the song of the sirens like?

Odysseus All the things you wanted to be and then all the things you wished you never wished for. It was a delicious itch you want to scratch but you find it under the skin and can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. It told you what you most want is what you most can't have and that the most you can't have is what you already had and lost. It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home.

Eurylochus Do we have enough provisions to get home?

Odysseus We've taken enough from Troy. A couple of stops on the way home won't kill us.

Menelaus Perhaps you've heard of Helen? Face that launched a thousand ships. Maybe now just five hundred.

Odysseus Hunting's nothing but fighting with stealth.

Odysseus Ten years on this fucking beach. Let's go home!