The wood nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.

The more you know, the more you try to change them, and that can be disastrous.

Leo took out a pen and autographed the arm of one of the nymphs. “Narcissus is a loser! He’s so weak, he can’t bench-press a Kleenex. He’s so lame, when you look up lame on Wikipedia, it’s got a picture of Narcissus—only the picture’s so ugly, no one ever checks it out.

We were just looking at maps.

She stared at me. "Fly, ;ole, in an airplane, which you were warned never to do lest Zeus strike you out of the sky, AND carrying a weapon that has more destructive power than a nuclear bomb?" "Yeah," I said. "Pretty much exactly like that.

For a moment, Percy actually remembered what it was like to be happy. He had an amazing girlfriend. They could have a future together.

I saw 'The 39 Clues' as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way - to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.