“This was a few weeks ago," Annabeth said. "Percy told me a crazy story about meeting a boy our near Moriches Bay. Apparently this kid used hieroglyphs to cast spells. He helped Percy battle a crocodile monsters."
"The Sob of Sobek!" Sadie blurted. "But my brother battled that monster. He didn't say anything about-"
"Is your brother's name Carter?" Annabeth asked.
An angry golden aura flickered around Sadie's head-a halo of hieroglyphs that resembled frowns, fists, and dead stick men.
"As of this moment," Sadie growled, "My brother's name is Punching Bag.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Oh, I believe you. It’s too ridiculous not to be true. It’s just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We’re at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I’m thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I’ve adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say, Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We’ve also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray! ”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“[Annabeth]I might have a plan. It’ll be your turn to keep Serapis distracted.’
Sadie frowned. ‘Did I mention I’m out of magic?’
‘That’s okay,’ Annabeth said. ‘How are you at bluffing, lying and trash-talking?’
Sadie raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve been told those are my most attractive qualities.’
‘Excellent,’ Annabeth said. ‘Then it’s time I taught you some Greek.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“No one is like me," Sadie agreed. "My amazingness is unique.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Intelligence won wars, not brute force.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Suit yourself.’ Sadie shouldered her pack, then helped Annabeth up. ‘You say Carter drew a hieroglyph on your boyfriend’s hand. All well and good, but I’d rather stay in touch with you directly.’
Annabeth smirked. ‘You’re right. Can’t trust boys to communicate.’
They exchanged cell-phone numbers.
‘Just don’t call unless it’s urgent,’ Annabeth warned. ‘Cell-phone activity attracts monsters.’
Sadie looked surprised. ‘Really? Never noticed. I suppose I shouldn’t send you any funny-face selfies on Instagram, then.’
‘Probably not.’
‘Well, until next time.’ Sadie threw her arms round Annabeth.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Awkward. Sorry."
"Don't be," Sadie said. "I'll rather enjoy bashing my brother's face in.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“That wasn’t my future I destroyed,’ she assured herself. ‘I make my own future.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“I don't recall meeting Greek demigods in any of those places. Still, when one has dealt with magical baboons, goddess cats and dwarfs in Speedos, one can’t be surprised very easily.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Annabeth nodded. "That's right.Alexander conquered Egypt.After he died, his general Ptolemy took over. He wanted the Egyptians to accept him as their pharaoh, so he mashed the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods together and made up new ones."
"Sounds messy," Sadie said. "I prefer my gods unmashed.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“She gripped her new bronze dagger, realizing it was too small and too short to provide much offensive power. But that's why Annabeth liked daggers: they kept her focused. A child of Athena should never rely on a blade if she could use her wits instead. Intelligence won wars, not brute force.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“She didn’t like taking credit for other people’s camels,”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Excuse me,” she said. “Is that a flowerpot on your head?”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Well, until next time.' Sadie threw her arms around Annabeth. Annabeth was a little shocked to be getting a hug from a girl she'd just met - a girl who could just as easily have seen Annabeth as an enemy. But the gesture made her feel good. In life-and-death situations, Annabeth had learned, you could make friends pretty quickly. She patted Sadie's shoulder. 'Stay safe.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Oh, I believe you. It’s too ridiculous not to be true. It’s just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We’re at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and become the lord of the dead. Brilliant! Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I’m thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I’ve adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say: Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We’ve also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray!”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“The storm isn’t completely random,” Annabeth said. “See there? And there? Bits of material are coming together, forming some kind of structure inside the building.” Sadie frowned. “Looks like bricks in a blender to me.” Annabeth”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“What Were the Gods Thinking?” list.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“goddess must have had a herd of stealth cows patrolling Manhattan.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Staff of Serapis
“Something Mama liked to say: “I love Jesus, but some of his representatives sure make my ass tired.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“My form master in 4B1, Snappy Priestman, was a gentle man, cultivated, kind and civilized except when he (very occasionally) lost his temper. Even then, there was something oddly gentlemanly about the way he did it. In one of his lessons he caught a boy misbehaving. After a lull when nothing happened, he began to give us verbal warning of his escalating internal fury, speaking quite calmly as an objective observer of his own internal state. Oh dear. I can't hold it. I'm going to lose my temper. Get down below your desks. I'm warning you. It's coming. Get down below your desks. As his voice rose in a steady crescendo he was becoming increasingly red in the face, and he finally picked up everything within reach - chalk, inkpots, books, wood-backed blackboard erasers - and hurled them, with the utmost ferocity, towards the miscreant. Next day he was charm itself, apologizing briefly but graciously to the same boy. He was a kind gentleman provoked beyond endurance - as who would not be in his profession? Who would not be in mine, for that matter?”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
“But here through the dusk comes one who is not glad to be at rest. He is a workman on the ranch, an old man, an immigrant Italian. He takes his hat off to me in all servility, because, forsooth, I am to him a lord of life. I am food to him, and shelter, and existence. He has toiled like a beast all his days, and lived less comfortably than my horses in their deep-strawed stalls. He is labour-crippled. He shambles as he walks. One shoulder is twisted higher than the other. His hands are gnarled claws, repulsive, horrible. As an apparition he is a pretty miserable specimen. His brain is as stupid as his body is ugly. "His brain is so stupid that he does not know he is an apparition," the White Logic chuckles to me. "He is sense-drunk. He is the slave of the dream of life. His brain is filled with superrational sanctions and obsessions. He believes in a transcendent over-world. He has listened to the vagaries of the prophets, who have given to him the sumptuous bubble of Paradise. He feels inarticulate self-affinities, with self-conjured non-realities. He sees penumbral visions of himself titubating fantastically through days and nights of space and stars. Beyond the shadow of any doubt he is convinced that the universe was made for him, and that it is his destiny to live for ever in the immaterial and supersensuous realms he and his kind have builded of the stuff of semblance and deception. "But you, who have opened the books and who share my awful confidence—you know him for what he is, brother to you and the dust, a cosmic joke, a sport of chemistry, a garmented beast that arose out of the ruck of screaming beastliness by virtue and accident of two opposable great toes. He is brother as well to the gorilla and the chimpanzee. He thumps his chest in anger, and roars and quivers with cataleptic ferocity. He knows monstrous, atavistic promptings, and he is composed of all manner of shreds of abysmal and forgotten instincts." "Yet he dreams he is immortal," I argue feebly. "It is vastly wonderful for so stupid a clod to bestride the shoulders of time and ride the eternities." "Pah!" is the retort. "Would you then shut the books and exchange places with this thing that is only an appetite and a desire, a marionette of the belly and the loins?" "To be stupid is to be happy," I contend. "Then your ideal of happiness is a jelly-like organism floating in a tideless, tepid twilight sea, eh?”
― Jack London, quote from John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs
“Victoria hated messes. She hated distractions. Friends were the worst distraction of all.”
― Claire Legrand, quote from The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls
“Chopped up fairy wings, the heart of a narwhal taken during a lunar eclipse, spit from a consumptive.… Christ. Just drink it, will you?”
― Laura London, quote from The Windflower
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