Odysseus
The power of the sacrifice is in the cost of the person making it.
More lines from Odysseus
7 quotes Odysseus
Odysseus
Don't look for gods in men; you'll always be disappointed.
Odysseus
Ten years on this **** beach. Let's go home!
Odysseus
After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home. Not even me.
Odysseus
Hunting's nothing but fighting with stealth.
Odysseus
Help me go home.
Odysseus
The clearest view of a man is from below.
Scenes with Odysseus
12 scenes
Eurylochus
Do we have enough provisions?
Odysseus
We've taken enough from Troy. Another stop or two won't kill us.
Odysseus
Come back as a prince, call a banquet. I'll be there.
Telemachus
What will you do at the banquet?
Odysseus
Beg. The clearest view of men is from below.
Odysseus
Why can't gods speak in ways we understand?
Athena
Who doesn't understand thunder? Fire? A child's smile? A good harvest?
Polyphemus
[sobbing and turned away from Odysseus and his men]
Father Poseidon, they blinded me... Vengeance, father, vengeance for me... Poseidon, vengeance for me...!
Polites
[observing the Cyclops' cries to Poseidon ]
It can talk. Why didn't it talk before?
Odysseus
Do you talk to ants?
Odysseus
Are there any loyal servants?
Telemachus
Some. When Odysseus shows himself, all.
Agamemnon
Odysseus.
Odysseus
How are you here? We won the war; you headed for home.
Agamemnon
Odysseus, the most brilliant of all my generals. You would never be snared as I was.
Odysseus
Were you cast adrift, like us?
Agamemnon
No. My misfortune was to make it home. Be welcomed by my beautiful wife. Bathed, anointed, made soft. To learn the hardest lesson. That I left a poison in her heart years before. A good part of her heart had gone to another. She and her lover had plotted my murder for years. Odysseus.
Odysseus
Yes.
Agamemnon
My son Orestes, did he avenge me?
Odysseus
My lord, how could I know? I'm still trying to get home.
Agamemnon
Don't make my mistake. Don't walk in the front door expecting garlands and praise. Come in disguise. Take your time. Assess.
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.
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.
Odysseus
What if... when he left the belly of the horse... and opened the gates of Troy... he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night. We left them a gift in offering of peace that they took into their home... We violated all that's ever sacred between people... and turned the fight into a hunt. To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire. Including his home. What if he knew that very night as he walked through fires of anarchy and pain... And in the days of sweaty celebrations that followed, what if he knew exactly what he'd done?
Penelope
What all of you had done.
Odysseus
One man's idea, one man's trick... to break Zeus's Law forever. We live in a world of palaces, trades, language, blind to its beauty... until we broke it.
Odysseus
Antinous cheated you?
Sinon
As he's no doubt cheating you.
Odysseus
How?
Sinon
Who's in Ithaca looking after your wife and son?
Penelope
Promise me you will come back.
Odysseus
What if I can't?
Penelope
[last lines] [cradling Odysseus as he reunites with her, seeming as if he is dying]
Odysseus, my love! Odysseus... My love... You came back...
Odysseus
At last... The end... To see my beloved Ithaca, one last time...
Penelope
No, no... Oh, no, no, you can't, you can't, you can't, not now! Not now, please, I've waited so long... [sobs] You can't die!
Odysseus
Not death... Exile. Telemachus will be King. We'll head into the unknown west, to honor my men, together.
Penelope
Take your fastest ship and brightest crew and head for the horizon.
Odysseus
Chasing the escaping sun.
Penelope
[on the ship]
Why will the stories only be sung?
Odysseus
Because songs will be all they have to remember those of us who could write.
Penelope
Civilization will rise again.
Odysseus
A new dawn will break over the darkened world. And our mistakes will once again be forgotten.
