"So we call the Gods by their Greek names because that's their original form. But saying their Roman aspects are exactly the same-that's not true. In Rome, they became more warlike. They didn't mingle with mortals as much. They became harsher, more powerful-the Gods of an empire." "Like the dark side of the gods?" "Not exactly. They stood for discipline, honor, strength-"

""I'll fill you in later," Chiron said with forced cheerfulness. "The important thing is you have prevailed. And you saved Annabeth!" Annabeth smiled at me gratefully, which made me look away."

"Until that morning, her brother Nico had been the most powerful demigod she knew. The others at Camp Jupiter saw him as a traveling oddball, about as harmless as the fauns. Hazel knew better. She hadn't grown up with Nico, hadn't even known him very long. But she knew Nico was more dangerous than Reyna, or Octavian, or maybe even Jason. Then she'd met Percy. At first, when she saw him stumbling up the highway with the old lady in his arms, Hazel had thought he might be a god in disguise. Even though he was beat up, dirty, and stooped with exhaustion, he'd had an aura of power."

"She looked like she was ready for a fight. Her fists were balled, but I thought I heard a quiver in her voice. Suddenly I realized that despite her angry attitude, she was afraid of me. She probably thought I was going to fight her control of the river, and she was worried she would lose. The thought made me sad. I felt like a bully, a son of Poseidon throwing his weight around. I sat down on a tree stump. "Okay, you win.""

""Grover was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made no sense to me, but Grover looked concerned. "That's us," he said. "Those five nuts right there." "Which one is me?" I asked. "The little deformed one," Zoe suggested. "Oh, shut up.”"

"Well then, why are you on this quest?" "Artemis has been captured." "Oh, Artemis. Please. Talk about a hopeless case. I mean, if they were going to kidnap a goddess, she should be breathtakingly beautiful, don't you think? I pity the poor dears who have to imprison Artemis. Bo-ring!" "But she was chasing a monster. A really, really bad monster. We have to find it!" "Always some monster. But my dear Percy, that is why the others are on this quest. I'm more interested in you. "Annabeth is in trouble." "Exactly!" "I have to help her"

"There is always a way out for those clever enough to find it.""

"This is why I don't use mortals. They are unreliable." "They are weak-minded, easily bought, and violent. I love them."

"“Hey, can I see that sword you were using?" I showed him Riptide, and explained how it turned from a pen into a sword just by uncapping it. "Cool! Does it ever run out of ink?" "Um, well, I don't actually write with it." "Are you really the son of Poseidon?" "Well, yeah." "Can you surf really well, then?" I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh. "Jeez, Nico," I said. "I've never really tried." He went on asking questions. Did I fight a lot with Thalia, since she was a daughter of Zeus? (I didn't answer that one.) If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to fall off a cliff? (I tried not to strangle Nico for asking that one.) Was Annabeth my girlfriend? (At this point, I was ready to stick the kid in a meat-flavored sack and throw him to the wolves.)”"

"Wow," Thalia muttered. "Apollo's hot." "He's the sun god," I said. "That's not what I meant."

"I don't know," she admitted. "But thank you for rescuing me." "Hey, no big deal. We're friends." "You didn't believe I was dead?" "Never."

"I don't have much time," my mom said. "Percy, whatever you decide, I love you. And I know you'll do what's best for Annabeth." "How can you be sure?" "Because she'd do the same for you."

"I'm just a kid Chiron. What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?" "What good is one lousy hero? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."

"Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum."

"What Luke told you back on the Princess Andromeda, about starting the world from scratch.. that really got to you, huh?" "My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris." "That brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?" "No, Seaweed Brain. That's hummus. Hubris is worse." "What could be worse than hummus?" "Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else... even the gods."

"Don't you ever feel like, what if the world realy is messed up? What if we could do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework." "I'm listening." "I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did-that's why the fire is still burning. That's why Olympus is still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, I would do it better.' Don't you ever feel that way? Like you could do a better job if you ran the world?" "Um... no. Me running the world would kind of be a nightmare."

"Damn it, Jackson. Do you have any idea how hard Colchis bulls are to come by?"

"I will not have a sea creature destroyed, if I can help it. And I can help it."

""It's okay, Ms. Jackson." Annabeth smiled reassuringly. Her blond hair was tucked into a ski cap and her gray eyes were the same color as the ocean. "We'll keep him out of trouble." Mom seemed to relax a little. She thinks Annabeth is the most levelheaded demigod ever to hit eighth grade. She's sure Annabeth often keeps me from getting killed. She's right, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Everywhere we went, dead Confederate sailors stared at us, their ghostly bearded faces shimmering over their skulls. They approved of Annabeth because she told them she was from Virginia."

"He's a monster, lord!" "He's a son of Poseidon. Just like... well, just like me." "No! Monster! Horse-eater! Not trusted!" "I'll give you sugar cubes at the end of the race." "Sugar cubes?" "Very big sugar cubes. And apples. Did I mention the apples?"

"I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut."

"Pluto's cool. It's not his fault he runs the Underworld. He just got bad luck when the gods were dividing up the world, you know? Jupiter got the sky, Neptune got the sea, and Pluto got the shaft."

"You named him Festus? You know that in Latin, 'festus' means 'happy'? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?"

"“The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa fell off and died along the way, but that's not important." "It was probably important to her.”"

"In each case, your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos's traps. Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. To save a friend, you would sacrafice the world."

""Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. "I'm glad you're not a guinea pig." "Me, too." I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt."

"Hermes gazed up at the stars. "My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet--”"

"I'm the son of Jupiter! I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion. I slew the Trojan sea monster, I toppled the black throne of Kronos and and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."

"Banks can be robbed. Building can burn down. Strange things conspire when one tries to cheat fate."

"There! A prophecy. You can add it to your books, engrave it on your floor, whatever." "This says, 'Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by June twenty-fourth or die.'" "Yes. Is that not clear?" "Well, my lord... prophecies are usually unclear. They're wrapped in riddles. They rhyme, and..." "Yes?" "The prophecy is clear! A quest!"

"He called us...what, demigods?" "Don't know what demi means, but I'm not feeling too godly. You guys feeling godly?"

"Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light."

"Throughout history, the circumpunct has been all things to all people — it is the sun god Ra, alchemical gold, the all-seeing eye, the singularity point before the Big Bang..."

"Don't tell me, bookish bachelor seeking single Noetic Scientist?"

"Wealth is commonplace, but wisdom is rare."

"Although many people erroneously interpreted apocalypse as a cataclysmic end of the world, the word literally signified an “unveiling,” predicted by the ancients to be that of great wisdom. The coming age of enlightenment. Even so, Langdon could not imagine such a vast change being ushered in by . . . a word."

"America’s intended destiny has been lost to history. The forefathers who founded this capital city first named her “Rome.” They had named her river the Tiber and erected a classical capital of pantheons and temples, all adorned with images of history’s great gods and goddesses — Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Helios, Vulcan, Jupiter. In her center, as in many of the great classical cities, the founders had erected an enduring tribute to the ancients — the Egyptian obelisk. This obelisk, larger even than Cairo’s or Alexandria’s, rose 555 feet into the sky, more than thirty stories, proclaiming thanks and honor to the demigod forefather for whom this capital city took its newer name. Washington."

"Our connection was fine professor, and I have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit"

"Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user."

"In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase "It’s buried out there somewhere." All organizations in this novel exist, including the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMSC, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real."

"The secret is how to die. Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die."

"He gazed up through the rain-speckled glass ceiling at the mountainous form of the illuminated Capitol Dome overhead. It was an astonishing building. High atop her roof, almost three hundred feet in the air, the Statue of Freedom peered out into the misty darkness like a ghostly sentinel. Langdon always found it ironic that the workers who hoisted each piece of the nineteen-and-a-half-foot bronze statue to her perch were slaves — a Capitol secret that seldom made the syllabi of high school history classes."

"Sorry, but the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means "hidden" or "obscured." In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or "occult," and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything "occult" as evil, and the prejudice survived."

"Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh....And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."

"Some people had gifts that made them great at being kids. Riley had those gifts. She was fearless, and she was fair. She was effortlessly expert at skateboarding, sailing, running fast, coaxing a fish off of any line. She was the pitcher on the winning corkball team for seven years in a row. She was the first kid up on a surfboard. She was even good at indoor things, like card tricks and video games. She didn't believe in hierarchies - not even mothers. She was the one kid every other kid wanted to befriend, and she never used her power for ill."

"Riley made it seem like they were all gods of their world, but Alice know that Riley was really the god. She just gave them turns sometimes."

"Alice felt disloyal to Riley when she began to realize, much later, that her natural talents, her ability to communicate and observe, her caution, her empathy, her love of knitting, suited her better to the grown-up world."

"She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better."

"I'm serious. They'll give you money to fight with people. You'll spend your days distrusting people and thinking of what will go wrong. You're an optimist. You'll get crushed by that." "I won't," she said defensively. "I'm not so fragile." He managed to get her hand again. He pulled her to a stop. "Everyone is fragile. Everything beautiful is fragile." She chewed on her cheek. She stared at her feet. She tried to blink the water back into her eyes before she looked at him again. "You want to fish for crabs?"