Medea Quotes

Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.

Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive

Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.

The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.

Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour

the centre of every poem is this: The centre of every poem is this: I have loved you. I have had to deal with that. — Salma Deera, Letters from Medea (2015)

tell me how does it feel with my teeth in your heart!

I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once.

People talk about nature as a mother, but to me she's always been Medea, ready and willing to slaughter her children.

My love for you was greater than my wisdom.

I understand too well the dreadful act I'm going to commit, but my judgement can't check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do.

Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)

Arm yourself, my heart: the thing that you must do is fearful, yet inevitable.

She came into the world fierce and stubborn and then she learned to hate.

For in other ways a woman is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love, no other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.

I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.

It's human; we all put self interest first.

Take back your rib, Eve cries. I didn't want it. I never did. It is weighing me down.

Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.

in your dream, you are jealous of tragedies. and the truth is, we all want our own tragedy, because life is pale without it. we want the teeth, the screaming. the survival that comes with it.

Since I am wise, some people envy me, some think I'm idle, some the opposite, and some feel threatened. Yet I'm not all that wise.

Better a humble heart, a lowly life. Untouched by greatness let me live - and live. Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.

death is the only water to wash away this dirt

you will rise. and are you less of a woman for this? no what is woman? woman is this—enduring. listen girl, you will survive this–you will. but what fool said you had to do it silently? here is a tip—scream

Gods often contradict our fondest expectations. What we anticipate does not come to pass. What we don't expect some god finds a way to make it happen. So with this story

Old loves are dropped when new ones come

she says to me: 'if you want to hurt a man, you don't kill the man. you kill what he loves.' i nod. and then i ask her: 'so how do you hurt a woman?' she answers: 'my child, a woman is hurting from the moment of birth.

What other creatures are bred so exquisitely and purposefully for mistreatment as women are?

Once upon a time there was a wicked witch and her name was Lilith Eve Hagar Jezebel Delilah Pandora Jahi Tamar and there was a wicked witch and she was also called goddess and her name was Kali Fatima Artemis Hera Isis Mary Ishtar and there was a wicked witch and she was also called queen and her name was Bathsheba Vashti Cleopatra Helen Salome Elizabeth Clytemnestra Medea and there was a wicked witch and she was also called witch and her name was Joan Circe Morgan le Fay Tiamat Maria Leonza Medusa and they had this in common: that they were feared, hated, desired, and worshiped.

my curse is that i fall in love with men who believe in gods but not in me.

but tell me, who was it that made you dangerous? it was no one. it was me. it was everyone.

it's like this: say there's a whole room of people and you're somewhere in the middle of them all. i walk in and i see you, but you don't suddenly become the only person in the room. god no. you become the room. you are the room.

Do not grieve so much for a husband lost that it wastes away your life.

Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum, we have bought a husband, we must then accept him as possessor of our body.

She sings a dark destructive song.

Call me by a man’s name instead of a woman’s, and suddenly every horrific thing I’ve done makes me a hero.

Your father abandoned us. (Zephyra) I know. You’ve told me that enough that it’s permanently seared into my brain. Still, he’s a part of me and I’d like to have closure. (Medea) You really need to stop watching Oprah. (Zephyra)

I will storm the gods, and shake the universe.

Who then will dare to say I'm weak or timid? No, they'll say I'm loyal as a friend, ruthless as a foe, so much like a hero destined for glory.

i want to discover myself. i want to destroy myself. i want to be a secret that nobody but i can ruin.

And so my thoughts have lead me to believe that childless men and women lead lives more fortunate than those with sons and daughters.

Pay special attention to their agony so I might take some pleasure.

in astronomy class, the muse urania angrily watches a panel of men talk about the wonders of the stars as though they created them.

A possession considered of little value up to now suddenly becomes precious to a person if another person desires it, don't you think?

Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, A stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite, One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends; For the lives of such persons are most remembered.

I will storm the Gods and shake the Universe

We'll see how the sky catches fire. We'll see how she feeds the flames with her implacable hate.

A woman like me! What am I like that's different from you or any man

Whenever you hear a story about villainous women, you should ask who’s telling the story. Medea’s tale has been told and retold a dozen times, but always by men who seem to revel in her heinous actions without addressing what caused it. Sometimes her story is used to showcase women as crazy, unpredictable, or vindictive.

Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll.

when i love, it happens almost all at once. it is inconsiderate, unrefined - a child screeching in a supermarket it's a thunderclap. it is a small village blackout. it is aphrodite rising from the sea foam, fully formed.

What are you doing here snooping around, Tory? (Medea) I didn’t think I was snooping. It didn’t feel like a snoop. I have snooped before and can honestly say this isn’t it. (Tory)

You have the skill. What is more, you were born a woman, And women, though most helpless in doing good deeds, Are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers.

MEDEA: The gods know who was the author of this sorrow. JASON: Yes, the gods know indeed, they know your loathsome heart. MEDEA: Hate me. But I tire of your barking bitterness.

Why long for death's marriage bed which human beings all shun? Death comes soon enough and brings an end to everything.

some boys will give you the sun so you can bloom. but other boys will give you the sun to watch you melt.

We must not think too much: people go mad if they think too much.

O what will she do, a soul bitten into with wrong?

In childbirth grief begins.

Trust me, baby, you weren’t that good. I was just a better actress than you were actor. (Zephyra to Stryker) Ew! No offense, Mum, I don’t want to know who you’ve slept with. Kill the sexual bantering and him before I go deaf from it. (Medea)

No one who goes against her can win.

Relax, Medea. We’ve come to see your mother. (Tory) Your funeral. (Medea) It’s always so good to see you, too. You’re just such a ray of happy sunshine. I so look forward to all our interactions. (Tory)

and you laugh. loudly-- head tipping back. and while your eyes are on the ceiling, i am mouthing something too heavy even for this steady night to shoulder. ‘this is not a joke.’ i mouth. ‘love me. love me.

You would destroy your own grandfather?" I asked. Medea shrugged. "Why not? You gods are all family, but you're constantly trying to kill each other." I hate it when evil sorceresses have a point.

A family formed by crime must be broken by more crime.

The centre of every poem is this: I have loved you. I have had to deal with that. — Salma Deera, Letters from Medea (2015)

When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me. He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me. It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left. As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it. Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on. He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me. Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time. Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution. I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart. 'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face. He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic. But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love. 'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.' He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero. 'Then why should I be a heroine?' He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket. I considered my choices. I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated. I could leave and be unhappy and dignified. I could Beg him to touch me again. I could live in hope and die of bitterness. I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too. I hear he's replaced the back fence.

Medea? Don’t worry. Satara’s rooms are far enough away that you won’t be subjected to the sounds of wild monkey sex. (Stryker) Ew! You were right, Mum. I should have allowed you to cut his throat. Get me out of here as quickly as possible. (Stryker)

Not too little, not too much: there safety lies.

My most humiliating thought:Medea would capture me,try to strip away my divine power and find I didn't have any left. What is this? she would scream. There's nothing here but Lester! Then she would kill me anyway.

Not yet do you feel it. Wait for the future.

or else I would have sung a song in response to what the male sex sings. For our lengthy past has much to say about men's lives as well as ours

It would have been better far for men To have got their children in some other way, and women Not to have existed. Then life would have been good. CHORUS

i am a human body turned inside out. my soft skin is saved for me alone.

Eros aimed one of his arrows at Medea, and drove it into her heart, up to the feathers.

you want to know the logic behind my actions? here is one explanation: call me by a man’s name instead of a woman’s, and suddenly every horrific thing i’ve done makes me a hero.

Amongst mortals no man is happy; wealth may pour in and make one luckier than another, but none can happy be.

you are ares' lost sister. goddess of sedated battles and lost girls. always full of other people and never yourself.

but i want to ask her what is wrong with being dark and heavy with your feet firmly on soil?

Ruthless is the temper of royalty; How much better to live among the equals.Let me decline in a safe old age. The very name of the "middle way".

You can quiz me on Petrarch, Medea, Shakespeare or Dante, I know them all, and I’m sorry, but they’ve all gone wrong. Dumb glorified men, writing words about love and life as if they knew. As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t make it out alive either, so I’m sure as hell not going to go to them for advice.

...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues.

Bless Piper’s intuition, appealing to Meg’s stubborn streak. And bless Meg’s willful, weed-covered little heart. She interposed herself between me and Medea. “Apollo’s my dumb servant. You can’t have him.

All of us judge by sight and not by knowledge.

You really don’t care for torture, do you? (Medea) No, I don’t. It’s one thing to strike out in anger, another to cause agony for the hell of it. I’m a soldier, not a coward. (Stryker)

A pain was gnawing in my chest. I pressed my hands to it, the hollows and hard bones. I sat before my loom and felt at last like the creature Medea had named me: old and abandoned and alone, spiritless and gray as the rocks themselves.

love is just a synonym for absinthe. absinthe is a synonym for 'i don't know what i'm doing anymore.

I remembered how much I had admired Hypsipyle’s strength and courage in fighting to claim the city as her own, but then she had offered it up to Jason. Medea had the power to charm monsters and heal mortal injuries, magic that lay the world at her feet, and yet she tried to shrink herself down to a life at his side. I wasn’t going to do that.

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.

listen girl,’ Medea says, ‘you are not the first person in the world to suffer from a broken heart. but i will treat you like you are. listen girl. he is not calling out your name. your name to him is nothing. it might have been before. once, your name might have been the only word he knew when he was blind sad or bursting with sun. those days are over. your name can only exist in your own mouth now. say it over and over. say it until it doesn’t sound like a name, but just a sound. the promises he made you are just sounds now too. remember that. your hands are what will hold you together now. and you want to be mad? be mad. here is a plate. throw it through his window, listen to the crack. the shatter. laugh into the night. call yourself the sun. see, you will rise. and are you less of a woman for this? no what is woman? woman is this–enduring. listen girl, you will get over this– you will. but what fool said you had to do it silently? here is a tip – scream

A working woman, rising before dawn to spin and needing light in her cottage room, piles brushwood on a smoldering log, and the whole heap kindled by the little brand goes up in a mighty blaze. Such was the fire of Love, stealthy but all-consuming, that swept through Medea's heart. In the turmoil of her soul, her soft cheeks turned from rose to white and white to rose.

Not for the first time I find our lives are a shadow, and I am not afraid to say that people who think they have everything figured out and are masters of logic - they are responsible for the greatest folly. No human being is happy. Strike it rich and you are luckier than your neighbor - but happy, never.

What heavenly power lends an ear To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver?

Yes, I can endure guilt, however horrible; The laughter of my enemies I will not endure. Now

power and alliance for them, slavery and conquest over us.

The mind of a queen Is a thing to fear. A queen is used To giving commands, not obeying them; And her rage once roused is hard to appease.

you are suitable for my skin type- my life type my heart type.

And I'm a woman made of sorrow.

Hast thou ice that thou shalt bind it To thy breast, and make thee dead To thy children, to thine own spirit's pain? When the hand knows what it dares, When thine eyes look into theirs, Shalt thou keep by tears unblinded Thy dividing of the slain? These be deeds Not for thee: These be things that cannot be!

In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson. Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont. Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one. Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man.