Rick Riordan: Herring (page 5)

“I tried to talk to Annabeth, but she was acting like I'd just punched her grandmother.”

“As for her charmspeak, she’d gotten so powerful it made Leo nervous. If she told him to eat his vegetables, he might actually do it.”

“Sacred Sibyl!” I cried. “Madam, there is something wrong with your midsection!”

The woman stopped, mystified, and looked down at her hugely swollen belly. “Well, I’m seven months pregnant.”

“Whenever he felt like giving up, plopping himself down, and dying (which was, like, every ten minutes), he reached over and took her hand, just to remember there was warmth in the world.”

“i remembered the myth about Andromeda and how she had been chained to a rock by her own parents as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Maybe she'd gotten too many F's on her report card or something.”

“Who wants us?" Bianca demanded. "Because if you think you'll get a ransom, you're wrong. We don't have any family. Nico and I—" Her voice broke a little. "We've got no one but each other.”

“Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life-in her two lives-she felt absolutely unstoppable.”

“Maybe—just maybe—Sadie had my best interests at heart. (I just caught her making faces at me, so maybe not.)”

“Why didn’t you sleep with the headrest?”
I shrugged. “It was uncomfortable.” I looked at Sadie for support. “You didn’t use it, did you?”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “Well, of course I did. It was obviously there for a reason.”

“I need to talk to Clarisse," Annabeth said.
I stared at her as if she'd just said "I need to eat a large, smelly boot."
"What for?”

“If I couldn't trust her, I couldn't trust anyone.”

“I could hear hopefulness in her voice, but also doubt. She was waiting for me to admit the obvious: I’d forgotten. I was toast. I was boyfriend roadkill.”

“Ella is nervous,” the harpy muttered from her perch on the railing. “The elephant. The elephant is watching Ella.”

“Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.”

“The old women only stuck around this long out of a sense of duty. Your mom was the same way. That's why I loved her. She put her duty first, ahead of evverything.”

“Annabeth sat up and glared at her ankle.
"You HAD to break," she scolded it.
The ankle did not reply.”

“She deserved at least one person who saw her and knew how good she was.”

“Mrs. O' Leary is my pet. I couldn't let you stick a sword in her rump, now, could I? That might've scared her.”

“That really was NOT fun, though. Well, the hitting-her-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear? NOT fun.”