“Bookstores should be broken down into two sections: books that suck and books that don’t suck.”
―
Benjamin Percy
“Plagues don't just kill people—and that's what lobos is, a plague—they kill humanity.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“...if he sees his fellow humans as anything more than complicated animals. Not so different from a deer or a wolf, knitted together with the same sinew but in another design.” ― Benjamin Percy
“When she thinks of the toxins built up inside of her from so many years of eating carelessly, of the resentment that has grown steadily over fifteen years of marriage, of the stretch marks and the varicose veins that came from two pregnancies, only one of them fulfilled, she thinks the inside of her body must tell a story like a tree. Were she to break open a bone, perhaps it would look like the inside of a coffee mug - riddled with lines, stained with brown blotches.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Wilding
“Her husband once said that he believed some sort of mathematical equation could be applied to life - since the longer you lived, the greater its seeming velocity. She always attributed this to familiarity. If you kept the same habits - and if you lived in the same place, worked in the same place - then you no longer spent a lot of time noticing. Noticing things - and trying to make sense of them - is what makes time remarkable. Otherwise, life blurs by, as it does now, so that she has difficulty keeping track of time at all, one day evaporating into the next.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“The editor-writer relationship should not be thought of as adversarial.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“Fear beats logic every time,” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“Q: What’s the key to suspense? A: I’ll tell you later.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“The best way to mess with the head of your reader is to strategize the delivery of bad news.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“All stories are in conversation with other stories. —Neil Gaiman” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“We wore headlamps and the sight of us bobbing up the hill or zipping perilously down it had the look of busy stars, as if the night sky had come down to join us in our play.” ― Benjamin Percy
“The more characters you have, the bigger the book, the more flaming chain saws.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“It’s like this. Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die. People die for love. They would give up anything for love, even their life. And don’t you see, that’s a denial of the most basic of all human instincts: survival.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“... he feels the darkness of the grave pressing around the fire and infecting his vision so that there seems to be no separation between the living and the dead, a child born with a mud wasp's nest for a heart and its eyes already pocketed with dust, ready to be clapped into a box and dropped down a hole.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“Someone once told him the scariest part of any story was when a character crept forward to investigate a strange sound. Whatever nightmare waited around the corner did not matter, its revelation almost always a disappointment. It was the imagined threat that mattered most.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“It’s hard to become an adult in the place where you grew up. Because you can never escape who you were.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Ninth Metal
“Books are like batteries, he says. And you grow a little stronger by reading them, surrounding yourself with them.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dark Net
“The girl remains on the ground. He looks at her and she looks at him and the air feels at once static and loaded, as if there is some kind of undersound his ear can't quite decipher. Like after a bell rings. That's how it is between them. There is something celestial about her, her skin a pale color, but a paleness of the softest gray-white imaginable, as if she had been soaking for years in a bath of moonlight.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“Midtown was a war zone. We flew over little skirmishes everywhere. A giant was ripping up trees in Bryant Park while dryads pelted him with nuts. Outside the Waldorf Astoria, a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin was whacking a hellhound with a rolled-up newspaper. A trio of Hephaestus campers fought a squad of dracaenae in the middle of Rockefeller Center.I was tempted to stop and help, but I could tell from the smoke and noise that the real action had moved farther south. Our defenses were collapsing. The enemy was closing in on the Empire State Building.We did a quick sweep of the surrounding area. The Hunters had set up a defensive line on 37th, just three blocks north of Olympus. To the east on Park Avenue, Jake Mason and some other Hephaestus campers were leading an army of statues against the enemy. To the west, the Demeter cabin and Grover's nature spirits had turned Sixth Avenue into a jungle that was hampering a squadron of Kronos's demigods. The south was clear for now, but the flanks of the enemy army were swinging around. A few more minutes and we'd be totally surrounded.” ― Percy Jackson, The Last Olympian
“Plagues don't just kill people—and that's what lobos is, a plague—they kill humanity.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“...if he sees his fellow humans as anything more than complicated animals. Not so different from a deer or a wolf, knitted together with the same sinew but in another design.” ― Benjamin Percy
“When she thinks of the toxins built up inside of her from so many years of eating carelessly, of the resentment that has grown steadily over fifteen years of marriage, of the stretch marks and the varicose veins that came from two pregnancies, only one of them fulfilled, she thinks the inside of her body must tell a story like a tree. Were she to break open a bone, perhaps it would look like the inside of a coffee mug - riddled with lines, stained with brown blotches.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Wilding
“Her husband once said that he believed some sort of mathematical equation could be applied to life - since the longer you lived, the greater its seeming velocity. She always attributed this to familiarity. If you kept the same habits - and if you lived in the same place, worked in the same place - then you no longer spent a lot of time noticing. Noticing things - and trying to make sense of them - is what makes time remarkable. Otherwise, life blurs by, as it does now, so that she has difficulty keeping track of time at all, one day evaporating into the next.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“The editor-writer relationship should not be thought of as adversarial.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“Fear beats logic every time,” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“Q: What’s the key to suspense? A: I’ll tell you later.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“The best way to mess with the head of your reader is to strategize the delivery of bad news.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“All stories are in conversation with other stories. —Neil Gaiman” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“We wore headlamps and the sight of us bobbing up the hill or zipping perilously down it had the look of busy stars, as if the night sky had come down to join us in our play.” ― Benjamin Percy
“The more characters you have, the bigger the book, the more flaming chain saws.” ― Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
“It’s like this. Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die. People die for love. They would give up anything for love, even their life. And don’t you see, that’s a denial of the most basic of all human instincts: survival.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“... he feels the darkness of the grave pressing around the fire and infecting his vision so that there seems to be no separation between the living and the dead, a child born with a mud wasp's nest for a heart and its eyes already pocketed with dust, ready to be clapped into a box and dropped down a hole.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“Someone once told him the scariest part of any story was when a character crept forward to investigate a strange sound. Whatever nightmare waited around the corner did not matter, its revelation almost always a disappointment. It was the imagined threat that mattered most.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dead Lands
“It’s hard to become an adult in the place where you grew up. Because you can never escape who you were.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Ninth Metal
“Books are like batteries, he says. And you grow a little stronger by reading them, surrounding yourself with them.” ― Benjamin Percy, The Dark Net
“The girl remains on the ground. He looks at her and she looks at him and the air feels at once static and loaded, as if there is some kind of undersound his ear can't quite decipher. Like after a bell rings. That's how it is between them. There is something celestial about her, her skin a pale color, but a paleness of the softest gray-white imaginable, as if she had been soaking for years in a bath of moonlight.” ― Benjamin Percy, Red Moon
“Midtown was a war zone. We flew over little skirmishes everywhere. A giant was ripping up trees in Bryant Park while dryads pelted him with nuts. Outside the Waldorf Astoria, a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin was whacking a hellhound with a rolled-up newspaper. A trio of Hephaestus campers fought a squad of dracaenae in the middle of Rockefeller Center.I was tempted to stop and help, but I could tell from the smoke and noise that the real action had moved farther south. Our defenses were collapsing. The enemy was closing in on the Empire State Building.We did a quick sweep of the surrounding area. The Hunters had set up a defensive line on 37th, just three blocks north of Olympus. To the east on Park Avenue, Jake Mason and some other Hephaestus campers were leading an army of statues against the enemy. To the west, the Demeter cabin and Grover's nature spirits had turned Sixth Avenue into a jungle that was hampering a squadron of Kronos's demigods. The south was clear for now, but the flanks of the enemy army were swinging around. A few more minutes and we'd be totally surrounded.” ― Percy Jackson, The Last Olympian
