People usually asked her if she had a belly button. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn't explain how. She didn't really want to know.

Why are they so sad?” I asked. “Well, they’re dead,” Carter speculated.

That's what being a demigod was all about, not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.

They had a silent staring contest, but Percy didn’t back down. When he and Annabeth started dating, his mother had drummed it into his head: It’s good manners to walk your date to the door. If that was true, it had to be good manners to walk her to the start of her epic solo death quest.

It was like Percy had faced death before, like he knew about grief. What mattered was listening. You didn’t need to say you were sorry. The only thing that helped was moving on—moving forward.

back from when they watched black and white TV and hunted dinosaurs.

I felt like one of Apollo's sacred cows- slow, dumb, and bright red.