"“Please,” I begged, “you have to run!” I reached for her but she stabbed my hand. I left her there. I didn’t know what else to do. She is still in my memory, when I sleep or maybe close my eyes sometimes. Sometimes she’s my mother, and the crying children are my sisters."

"Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!"

"They teach you how to resist the enemy, how to protect your mind and spirit. They don’t teach you how to resist your own people, especially people who think they’re trying to “help” you see “the truth.”"

"This generation had had enough, and that's why when the undead began to devour our country, we were almost too weak and vulnerable to stop them. I'm not blaming the civilian leadership and I'm not suggesting that we in uniform should be anything but beholden to them. This is our system and it's the best in the world. But it must be protected, and defended, and it must never again be so abused. - Travis D'Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe"

"I remember thinking, This had better be damned serious. Once I saw their faces, I regretted my wish."

"I found “Patient Zero” behind the locked door of an abandoned house across town. He was twelve years old. His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds, not on the gouges on his legs or arms, or from the large dry gap where his right big toe had been. He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls."

"Their family usually had them bound and gagged. You’d see something moving in the back of a car, squirming softly under clothing or heavy blankets. You’d hear banging from a car’s boot, or, later, from crates with airholes in the backs of vans. 'Airholes' … they really didn’t know what was happening to their loved ones.""

"You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [...] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales."

"I love my country enough to admit that one of our national flaws is isolationism. I wanted to combat that in World War Z and maybe give my fellow Americans a window into the political and cultural workings of other nations. Yes, in World War Z some nations come out as winners and some as losers, but isn't that the case in real life as well? I wanted to base my stories on the historical actions of the countries in question, and if it offends some individuals, then maybe they should reexamine their own nation's history"

"Paul Redeker always believed, well, perhaps not always, but at least in his adult life, that humanity’s one fundamental flaw was emotion."

"In the cab there was a very wealthy investment banker from Xi’an. He’d made a lot of money buying up American credit card debt. He had enough to pay for his entire extended family. The man’s Armani suit was rumpled and torn. There were scratch marks down the side of his face, and his eyes had that frantic fire I was starting to see more of every day. The driver’s eyes had a different look, the same one as me, the look that maybe money wasn’t going to be much good for much longer. I slipped the man an extra fifty and wished him luck. That was all I could do."

"Immediately we began to see bodies, men killed by their own booby traps. They looked like they’d been trying…running…to get out."

"A ruler's friend's judge him by his achievements, his enemies by the means he used to obtain them."

"A string of unbroken success leads people expect their leaders to be infallible, and when he falls short, they hate him. Complete failures are even worse, for then the leader is seen as weak. He is no longer treated as a factor by his rivals, who immediately move to fill the vacuum. The successful leader is one who is able to convince his people that they are in desperate straits, and only he has the strength and wisdom to keep them safe. Then the trick is never to put this reputation for strength and wisdom to the test. Glorious but untested reputations last forever."

"People know many things, and half of them are wrong. If only we knew which half, we'd have reason to be proud of our intelligence. What is knowledge? A belief that is shared by all the respectable people in a community, whether there is any real evidence for it or not. What is faith? A belief that we hold so strongly that we act as if it is true, even though we know there are many who do not believe it. What is opinion? A belief we expect other people to argue with. What is scientific fact? An oxymoron. Science does not deal in facts. It deals in hypotheses, which are never fully and finally correct."

"Human beings are not designed to keep secrets. Every aspect of our being is shaped for the sharing of information - through speech, gesture, facial expression, posture, and every other deliberate or inadvertent sign of emotion and intent. Thus, it should not surprise us that every would-be dictator, tyrant, conqueror, prophet, colonizer, politician, artist, and dog-catcher in history clearly signaled his intentions long before he acted and in plenty of time for others to prevent them. Neither Hitler nor Churchill, neither Pol Pot nor Abraham Lincoln ever did anything they hadn't told us and shown us they would do. That they are rarely prevented has more to do with our inattention, cowardice, or ambition to ride his coattails than with his particular skill. Dogs might run from the dogcatcher as soon as they see the net, but they rarely tear out his throat and kill him, which is, of course, the only rational course of action for the dog that values its life, liberty, or happiness."

"Praying for rain is such a bad idea. Even in the midst of a terrible drought, someone will say, Of course I want it to rain, but not today. Politics is the art of simultaneously satisfying groups with conflicting goals. The traditional way of accomplishing this is to speak to the groups separately, lie, and then, if you are caught, deny it. You count on the voters to forget or lose interest or change their minds, and they almost always come through for you. In our time, between national television and the internet, contradictions are more easily caught, so not the best method of pleasing everyone is to promise nothing while seeming to promise everything."

"Everything is too long a list to work with. No one knows everything about anything. No one knows something about everything. Everyone knows something about something. Anyone could be the world's foremost expert on something. Anyone who thinks that just because they didn't already know a thing, it must not be true or important, is an idiot."

"War will exist as long as any community desires to impose its will on another community more than it desires peace. Coercive men see only slaves and rivals in the world. If the meek refuse war to defend themselves against coercion, then they deserve to be slaves. Peace-lovers can only have what they love by being better at what they hate than those who love war. There is no road to peace that does not pass through war."

"Karma's a bitch, and so am I ~ Eve"

"Thank you He mimicked You're thanking that bitch? For what, Claire? For beating you? For trying to kill you? For killing my sister? Christ. First Michael, then you. I don't know any of you anymore." ~ Shane"

"Eve: Well punch him in the face and then run like hell."

"She had never thought of a guy's feet as sexy before. Not even movie-star feet. But Shane... There was no part of him that wasn't sizzle hot ~ Claire"

"Boys I'd turn gay if they weren't so sexy ~Eve"

"Eve was still frowning at the pasta like she suspected it was going to do something clever, like try to escape from the pot. ~Claire"

"[Talking about Eve] Shane: You've seen that movie where the zombies eat people's brains?"

"Eve: Right, pasta makes foam, good to know. Too hot. Way too hot."

"You're late." "Sorry, Sunshine. Traffic was murder." "You are covered with soot. And you managed to ruin the clothes I made for you, which were impossible to ruin." "Well, you know. I'm all about doing the impossible."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, bad idea. Bad. No Cookie. You can't go back, Not by yourself. ~Eve"

"But I've been noticing lately that he is totally Hottie Mchott of Hotland ~Eve"

"Talking to enemy statues now? Futile. You have roughly two minutes of life." "Oh, but I don't abide by your time frame, giant. A Roman does not wait for death. She seeks it out, and meets it on her own terms."

"Never assume you're safe, and never, ever tempt the Fates by announcing that you think you're safe."

"Although, to be fair, she is cute as a button.(Why do we say that? What's so cute about a button, anyway?)"

""You should've died for your crimes. That was the punishment. Instead you got exile. You should have stayed away. Your father Orcus may not approve of broken oaths. But my father Hades really doesn't approve of those who escape punishment." "Please!" That word didn't make sense to Nico. The Underworld had no mercy. It only had justice."

"So, are we at the lying point of the relationship already? Usually that comes after the exciting, hot and sexy honey-moon period."

"You could make even the most terrifying topic easier to talk about by framing it as something that happened to a couple of Cherokee hunters hundreds of years ago."

"We're going to run out there together." "Then what?" "I have no idea." "Gods, I hate it when you lead."

"You've got the wrong impression." "You've got the wrong impression, if you think you can attack me and take me captive. Where are my friends?" "Unharmed, right where you left them. Look, it's three to one and your hands are tied." "You're right. Get another six of you in here and it might be a fair fight."

"As always, the subject of Bianca lay between them like a loaded gun-deadly, easy to reach, impossible to ignore."

"Annabeth Chase, LXX: Annabeth, p. 527"

"His mother's unkept promise was at the core of who he was. He'd built his whole life around the irratation of her words, like the grain of sand at the center of a pearl. People lie. Promises are broken. That was why, as much as it chafed him, Jason followed rules. He kept his promises. He never wanted to abandon anyone the way he'd been abandoned and lied to."

"My mother showed me the truth. I was fighting against my own nature, and it brought me nothing but misery. Giants are not meant to love mortals or gods. Gaea helped me accept what I am. Eventually we all must return home, Praetor. We must embrace our past, no matter how bitter and dark."

"When she died, the words would probably be written on her tombstone: There were too many of them."

"So what if he was a hero? So what if he did something brave? Evil was always here, regenerating, bubbling under the surface. Percy was no more than a minor annoyance to these immortal beings. They just had to out wait him."

"You remind of my own children, Jason Grace. You have blown from place to place. You are undecided. You change day to day. If you could turn the wind sock, which way would it blow?" "Excuse me?" "You say you need a navigator. You need my permission. I say you need neither. It is time to choose a direction. A wind that blows aimlessly is of no use to anyone."

"Okay, maybe monsters kept coming back forever. But so did demigods. Generation after generation, Camp Half-Blood had endured. And Camp Jupiter. Even separately, the two camps had survived. Now, if the Greeks and Romans could come together, they would be even stronger. There was still hope."

"Get in the elevator. I'll hold the button." "Yeah, right! You promised, Seaweed Brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!" "You're impossible!" "Love you too!"

"I am the mother of all terrors! The Fates themselves! Hecate! Old Age! Pain! Sleep! Death! And all of the curses! Behld how newsworthy I am!"

"Tartarus was in a class all by himself. He was more powerful than the gods or Titans. Demigods were nothing to him. If Percy charged to help Bob, he would squashed like an ant. But Annabeth also knew that Percy wouldn't listen. He couldn't leave Bob to die alone. That just wasn't him-and that was one of the many reasons she loved him, even if he was an Olympian sized pain in the podex. "We'll go together.""

"Atlantis?" "That's a myth." "Uh... don't we deal in myths?" "No, I mean it's a made-up myth. Not, like, an actual true myth." "So this is why Annabeth is the brains of the operation, then?" "Shut up, Grace."