“These militiamen were what Jackson would call cou rouge. Because they were seriously red of the neck.”

“If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?”

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

“They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.”

“Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.”

“Jackson was a transformative president in part because he had a transcendent personality; other presidents who followed him were not transformative, and served unremarkably.”