"I'll succeed. And Hecate? I'm not choosing one of your paths. I'm making my own. We're going to find a way to stop Gaea. we're going to rescue our friends from Tartarus. We're going to keep the crew and the ship together, and we're going to stop Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood from going to war. We're going to do it all." "Interesting. That would be magic worth seeing."

""It's natural to feel fear. All great warriors are afraid. Only the stupid and the delusional are not. But you faced your fear, my son. You did what you had to do, like Horatious. This was your bridge, and you defended it."

"This took so long to make." "You can't rush perfection." "Yes, but will it work?" "Getting out, no problem. But to get back I'll need Festus and-" "What?" "Festus. My bronze dragon. Once I figure out how to rebuild him, I'll-" "You told me about Festus. But what do you mean get back?" "Well.. to get back here, duh. I'm sure I said that." "You most definitely did not." "I'm not gonna leave you here! After you helped me and everything? Of course I'm coming back."

"Your beloved has unleashed a special curs-a bitter thought from someone you abandoned. You punished an innocent soul by leaving her behind in solitude. Now her most hateful wish has come to pass: Annabeth feels her despair. She, too, will perish alone and abandoned."

"Stay where I can see you." "What are we, kids?" "Kids are baby goats. They're cute, and they have redeeming social value. You are definitely not kids."

"Percy, let me go. You can't pull me up." His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless. "Never"

"Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome. "We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again." Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall. "As long as we're together.""

"Annabeth thought she knew pain. She had fallen off the lava wall at Camp Half-Blood. She'd been stabbed in the arm with a poison blade on the Williamsburg Bridge. She had even held the weight of the sky on her shoulders. But that was nothing compared to landing hard on her ankle."

"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!"

""Janus and his doorways. He would have you believe that all choices are black or white, yes or no, in or out. In fact, it's not that simple. Whenever you reach the crossroads, there are always at least three ways to go... four, if you count going backward."

"She loved the architecture here. The houses and gardens were very beautiful, very Roman. But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects."

"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."

"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."

"Hercules was a bitter, selfish jerk. He'd hurt too many people, and he wanted to keep on hurting them. Maybe he'd had some bad breaks. Maybe the gods had kicked him around. But that didn't excuse it. A hero couldn't control the gods, but he should be able to control himself."

"Percy didn't feel powerful. The more heroic stuff he did, the more he realized how limited he was. He felt like a fraud. I'm not as great as you think., he wanted to warn his friends. His failures, like tonight, seemed to prove it. Maybe that's why he had started to fear suffocation. It wasn't so much drowning in the earth or the sea, but the feeling that was sinking into too many expectations, literally getting in over his head."

"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."

"He had no idea where the stereotype of dumb giggly blondes came from. Ever since he'd met Annabeth at the Grand Canyon last winter, when she'd marched toward him with that Give me Percy Jackson or I'll kill you expression, Leo thought of blondes as much too smart and much too dangerous."

"Annabeth put her knee to Percy's chest. She pushed her forearm against his throat. She didn't care what the Romans thought. A white-hot lump of anger expanded in her chest-a tumor of worry and bitterness that she'd been carrying around since last autumn. "If you ever leave me again," she said, her eyes stinging, "I swear to all the gods-" Percy had the nerve to laugh. Suddenly the lump of heated emotions melted inside Annabeth. "Consider me warned," Percy said. "I missed you, too.""

"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!"

"Oh, I'm strictly nonviolent. I can act in self-defense, but I won't be drawn into any more Olympian aggression, thank you very much. I've been reading about Buddhism. And Taoism. I haven't decided between them." "But... Aren't you a Greek goddess?" "Don't try to put me in a box, demigod! I'm not defined by my past."

""What are these guys?” he whispered."

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

"A street sign labeled the road to the main gate as VIA PRAETORIA. The other road, cutting across the middle of camp, was labeled VIA PRINCIPALIS. Under those markers were hand-painted signs like BERKELEY 5 MILES; NEW ROME 1 MILE; OLD ROME 7280 MILES; HADES 2310 MILES (pointing straight down); RENO 208 MILES; and CERTAIN DEATH: YOU ARE HERE!"

"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."

"Your mom used to tell me this Chinese proverb. Eat bitter-" "Eat bitter, taste sweet. I hate that proverb." "But it's true. What do they call it these days-no pain, no gain? Same concept. You do the easy thing, the appealing thing, the peaceful thing, mostly it turns out sour in the end. But if you take the hard path-ah, that's how you reap the sweet rewards. Duty Sacrafice. They mean something."

"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."

"Fair.. You'd be amazed how often I hear that word, Frank Zhang, and how meaningless it is. Is it fair that your life will burn so short and bright? Was it fair when I guided your mother to the Underworld? No. Not fair. And yet it was her time. There is no fairness in Death. If you free me, I will do my duty."

"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-"

"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?"

"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."

"You're still my best friend." He grinned. "Except for Annabeth." "That's different." "Yeah," he agreed. "It sure is."

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

"You know what would help this boy? Farming." "Mother-" "Six months behind a plough. Excellent character building."

"Well...sure good to be together again. Arguing. Almost dying. Abject terror. Oh, look. It's our floor."

"I picked up the jar. The spirit of Hope fluttered inside, trying to warm the cold container. "Hestia, I give this to you as an offering." "I am the least of the gods. Why would you trust me with this?" "You're the last Olympian. And the most important." "And why is that, Percy Jackson?" "Because Hope survives best at the hearth. Guard it for me and I won't be tempted to give up again.""

"How did you know?" "Know what?" "My Achilles spot. If you hadn't taken that knife, I would've died." "I don't know, Percy. I just had this feeling you were in danger. Where... where is the spot?" I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. But this was Annabeth. If I couldn't trust her, I couldn't trust anyone. "The small of my back." "Where? Here?" She put her hand on my spine, and my skin tingled. I moved her fingers to the one spot that grounded me to my mortal life. A thousand volts of electricity seemed to arc through my body. "You saved me. Thanks." She removed her hand, but I kept holding it. "So you owe me. What else is new?"

"In a flash I understood what had happened. He'd been trying to stab me. Judging from the position of his blade, he would've taken me - maybe by sheer luck - in the small of my back, my only weak point. Annabeth had intercepted the knife with her own body."

""So... You had the courage to visit the Styx. I had to pressure Luke in many ways to convince him. If only you had supplied my host body instead... But no matter. I am still more powerful. I am a TITAN!!"

"My son here convinced me that perhaps I should prioritize my list of enemies. As much as I dislike certain upstart demigods, it would not do for Olympus to fall. I would miss bickering with my siblings. And if there is one thing we agree on-it is that you were a TERRIBLE father."

""You're cute when you get worried, your eyebrows get all scrunched together." "You are not going to die while I owe you a favour. Why did you take that knife?" "You would've done the same for me." It was true. I guess we both knew it."

"Annabeth ran in right behind him, and I'll admit my heart did a little relay race in my chest when I saw her. It's not that she tried to look good. We'd been doing so many combat missions lately, she hardly brushed her curly blond hair any more, and she didn't care what clothes she was wearing - usually the same old orange camp T-shirt and jeans, and once in a while her bronze armour. Her eyes were stormy grey. Most of the time we couldn't get through a conversation without trying to strangle each other. Still, just seeing her made me feel fuzzy in the head. Last summer, before Luke turned into Kronos and everything went sour, there had been a few times when I thought maybe... well, that we might get past the strangle-each-other phase."

"Annabeth wiped a tear from her cheek. "I'm glad you're not dead, Seaweed Brain." "Thanks," I said. "Me too.""

"Please, man," I said. "It would mean a lot. For old times' sake?" He whimpered. "As I recall, in the old times we almost died a lot. But okay, here goes nothing."

"With great power... comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later."

"I found myself staring at her, which was stupid since I'd seen her a billion times. She and I were about the same height this summer, which was a relief. Still, she seemed so much more mature. It was kind of intimidating. I mean, sure, she'd always been cute, but she was starting to be seriously beautiful."

"Dad, when I was in the maze, I met Antaeus. He said... well, he said he was your favorite son. He decorated his arena with skulls and-" "He dedicated them to me. And you are wondering how someone could do something so horrible in my name. Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve it. The way our sons and daughters act in our names... well it usually says more about them than it does about us. And you, Percy, are my favorite son."

"I was losing the fight. The pain was too much. My hands and feet were melting into the water, my soul was being ripped from my body. I couldn't remember who I was. The pain of Kronos's scythe had been nothing compared to this. The cord, a familiar voice said. Remember your lifeline, dummy! Suddenly there was a tug at my lower back. The current pulled at me, but it wasn't carrying me away any more. I imagined the string in my back keeping me tied to the shore. "Hold on, Seaweed Brain." It was Annabeth's voice, much clearer now. "You're not getting away from me that easily." The cord strengthened."

"I wouldn't worry too much. The last Great Prophecy about you took almost seventy years to complete. This one may not even happen in your lifetime." "Maybe, but it didn't sound so good." "No. It certainly didn't. She's going to make a wonderful Oracle!"

"Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong."

"It isn't easy being a brilliant inventor. Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, they can't be fixed."