One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of the brightness of both this world and the next.
Alice Oswald

'The Odyssey' is the great tale, and I was really taken by 'The Iliad,' so I dig into those things, and when I was a kid I didn't. You've gotta have a certain level of understanding yourself before that stuff really starts to resonate.
Karl Marlantes

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.
Denis O'Hare

It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.
Raymond Queneau

If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, you'll see something of the difference between Homer's poetry and anyone else's. There seem to be real leaves still alive in the 'Iliad,' real animals, real people, real light attending everything.
Alice Oswald

Why can't death - if we must have it - be always glorious, as in 'The Iliad?'
P. J. O'Rourke

I suppose it's true that most great television, literature, and other forms of high art (and basic cable) benefit from a little hindsight. 'M.A.S.H.' comes to mind. So does 'The Iliad.'
Kevin Bleyer

Dr. Sidney Freedman: You know, I told you people something a long time ago, and it's just as pertinent today as it was then. Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice - pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

Claudius: Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.