그는 구혼자들 중에서 오디세우스가 제일 먼저 쏴 죽인...

그는 구혼자들 중에서 오디세우스가 제일 먼저 쏴 죽인자였다. 그가 이렇게 화살을 꽂고 연기를 하는 건 항의의 뜻이다. 그러거나 말거나 나에게는 씨도 안 먹히는 일이다. 이 인간은 살아서도 쓰레기였는데 죽어서도 여전히 쓰레기다. - P126

He gazed at me lugubriously, ...

He gazed at me lugubriously, with eyes like a whipped spaniel’s. - P100

He could barely suppress a smirk. - P101

You can put the arrow back now. To tell you the truth, I feel a surge of joy every time I see it sticking through your lying, gluttonous neck. - P102

‘What young man wouldn’t want to marry a rich and famous widow? Widows are supposed to be consumed with lust, especially if their husbands have been missing or dead for such a long time, as yours was. You weren’t exactly a Helen, but we could have dealt with that. The darkness conceals much! All the better that you were twenty years older than us – you’d die first, perhaps with a little help, and then, furnished with your wealth, we could have had our pick of any young and beautiful princess we wanted. You didn’t really think we were maddened by love for you, did you? You may not have been much to look at, but you were always intelligent.’ - P102

He was the first of the Suitors that Odysseus shot. This performance of his with the arrow is meant as a reproach, or so he intends it, but it doesn’t cut any ice with me. The man was a pest when he was alive, and a pest he remains. - P99

But I was the daughter of a Naiad; I remembered my mother’s advice to me. Behave like water, I told myself. Don’t try to oppose them. When they try to grasp you, slip through their fingers. Flow around them. - P107

Ask the Three Sisters, spinni...

Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have been altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer. - P69

Odysseus had made a special bed in it, one post of which was whittled from an olive tree that had its roots still in the ground. That way, he said, no one would ever be able to move or displace this bed, and it would be a lucky omen for any child conceived there. This bedpost of his was a great secret: no one knew about it except Odysseus himself, and my maid Actoris – but she was dead now – and myself. - P73

If the word got around about his post, said Odysseus in a mock-sinister manner, he would know I’d been sleeping with some other man, and then – he said, frowning at me in what was supposed to be a playful way – he would be very cross indeed, and he would have to chop me into little pieces with his sword or hang me from the roof beam. - P73

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable? - P80

He told me once that everyone had a hidden door, which was the way into the heart, and that it was a point of honour with him to be able to find the handles to those doors. For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny. - P57

I suspected he was going soft in the head. - P85

There is a certain zest to be had in tormenting the vulnerable. - P91

We’d smell it and make a beel...

We’d smell it and make a beeline for the site, like flies to a carcass. There we’d be, chirping and fluttering, thousands of us, like the contents of a giant wastepaper basket caught in a tornado, while some self-styled hero held us off with drawn sword until the one he wanted to consult appeared. A few vague prophecies would be forthcoming: we learned to keep them vague. Why tell everything? You needed to keep them coming back for more, with other sheep, cows, pigs, and so forth. - P17

There was a lot of pushing and shoving, a lot of slurping and spilling; there were a lot of crimson chins. However, it was glorious to feel the blood coursing in our non-existent veins again, if only for an instant. - P17

No living people went to the underworld much any more, and our own abode was upstaged by a much more spectacular establishment down the road – fiery pits, wailing and gnashing of teeth, gnawing worms, demons with pitchforks – a great many special effects. - P18

But we were still called up occasionally by magicians and conjurors – men who’d made pacts with the infernal powers – and then by smaller fry, the table-tilters, the mediums, the channellers, people of that ilk. - P18

I was very interested in the invention of the light bulb, for instance, and in the matter-into-energy theories of the twentieth century. More recently, some of us have been able to infiltrate the new ethereal-wave system that now encircles the globe, and to travel around that way, looking out at the world through the flat, illuminated surfaces that serve as domestic shrines. Perhaps that’s how the gods were able to come and go as quickly as they did back then – they must have had something like that at their disposal. - P19

She liked to appear in one of her Trojan outfits, over-decorated to my taste, but chacun à son goût. She had a kind of slow twirl she would do; then she’d lower her head and glance up into the face of whoever had conjured her up, and give one of her trademark intimate smiles, and they were hers. - P20

All she had to do was bare one of her peerless breasts, and he was down on his knees, and drooling and begging to take her back. - P20

If you were a magician, messing around in the dark arts and risking your soul, would you want to conjure up a plain but smart wife who’d been good at weaving and had never transgressed, instead of a woman who’d driven hundreds of men mad with lust and had caused a great city to go up in flames? Neither would I. - P21

Under the old rules only important people had marriages, because only important people had inheritances. All the rest was just copulation of various kinds – rapes or seductions, love affairs or one-night stands, with gods who said they were shepherds or shepherds who said they were gods. - P23

Immortality and mortality didn’t mix well: it was fire and mud, only the fire always won. - P23

In your world, you don’t get visitations from the gods the way people used to unless you’re on drugs. - P23

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world. - P24

Thus it went without saying that a marriage would be arranged for me when the time came. - P25

Some of it made its way to enormous palaces that have – strangely – no kings or queens in them. Endless processions of people in graceless clothing file through these palaces, staring at the gold cups and the silver bowls, which are not even used any more. Then they go to a sort of market inside the palace and buy pictures of these things, or miniature versions of them that are not real silver and gold. That is why I say trash. - P26

I know it isn’t me they’re after, not Penelope the Duck. It’s only what comes with me – the royal connection, the pile of glittering junk. No man will ever kill himself for love of me. - P28

no one cared who might worm his way in between their legs. - P30

And indeed the legs of Odysseus were quite short in relation to his body. It was all right when he was sitting down, you didn’t notice, but standing up he looked top-heavy. - P31

‘Not unless one of them was a bull,’ said another. ‘Or else a goat,’ said a third. ‘A big strong ram! I bet our young duck would like that! She’d be bleating soon enough!’ ‘I wouldn’t mind one of that kind myself,’ said a fourth. ‘Better a ram than the babyfingers you get around here.’ They all began laughing, holding their hands over their mouths and snorting with mirth. - P32

She and Odysseus are two of a kind. They both have such short legs. - P33

Why is it that really beautiful people think everyone else in the world exists merely for their amusement? - P33

She thought I was being pawned off on an uncouth dolt who would haul me off to a dreary backwater, and she was not displeased. - P37

And so I was handed over to Odysseus, like a package of meat. A package of meat in a wrapping of gold, mind you. A sort of gilded blood pudding. - P39

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. - P43

I liked to think so. I liked to think I had something in common with my husband: both of us had almost been destroyed in our youth by family members. All the more reason that we should stick together and not be too quick to trust others. - P47

I’ve chosen to give the telli...

I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of The Odyssey: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids; and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself.

Now that I’m dead I know everything. - P1

Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say. - P1

Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar, I just didn’t think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me. Hadn’t I been faithful? Hadn’t I waited, and waited, and waited, despite the temptation – almost the compulsion – to do otherwise? And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with. Why couldn’t they be as considerate, as trustworthy, as all-suffering as I had been? That was the line they took, the singers, the yarn-spinners. Don’t follow my example, I want to scream in your ears – yes, yours! But when I try to scream, I sound like an owl. - P2

I wanted happy endings in those days, and happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked and going to sleep during the rampages. - P2

there’s nothing more preposterous than an aristocrat fumbling around with the arts - P3

It’s always an advantage to have something to do with your hands. That way, if someone makes an inappropriate remark, you can pretend you haven’t heard it. Then you don’t have to answer. - P8

I use head figuratively. We have dispensed with heads as such, down here. - P8

The darker grottoes are more interesting – the conversation there is better, if you can find a minor rascal of some sort – a pickpocket, a stockbroker, a small-time pimp. Like a lot of goody-goody girls, I was always secretly attracted to men of that kind. - P15