The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) Quotes

“If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe what-ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.”

“He said, ‘You saw her snip the cord.’ ‘Yeah. So?’ But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal. ‘This is not happening,’ Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. ‘I don’t want this to be like the last time.‘”

“Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson.”

“It got so I almost believed them – Mrs. Dodds had never existed.”

“I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me . . .”

″‘But they’re stories,’ I said. ‘They’re—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.‘”

“I’d stay here, happy forever, playing games forever, and soon I’d forget my mom, and my quest, and maybe even my own name.”

“I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning.” His voice trembled. “I thought if you knew what a failure I was, you wouldn’t want me along.”

“But suddenly the world turned sideways. I realized I’d been played with. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had been set at each other’s throats by someone else. The master bolt had been in the backpack, and I’d gotten the backpack from . . .”

“Yes. Read The Iliad. It’s full of references to the stuff. Whenever divine or monstrous elements mix with the mortal world, they generate Mist, which obscures the vision of humans. You will see things just as they are, being a half-blood, but humans will interpret things quite differently. Remarkable, really, the lengths to which humans will go to fit things into their version of reality.”

“Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes.”

“Who says he’s seeing this place the way we’re seeing it? Humans see what they want to see. You’re very stubborn—er, persistent, that way?”

“The real world is where the monsters are.”

“She’d also called me brave...unless she was talking to the catfish.”

“Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done?”

“My name is Percy Jackson. I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that.”

“All I could think of was that the teachers must’ve found the illegal stash of candy I’d been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they’d realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.”

“Nothing like watching your relatives fight, I always say.”

“The sea does not like to be restrained. ”

“Suspecting and knowing are not the same.”