The Lightning Thief

What poverty actually teaches, from someone who sat through the lesson.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian · Sherman Alexie

Οι ιστορίες που επινοείς για να κρύψεις ποιος είσαι.

Now, my three friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her... I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth...

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban · J. K. Rowling

A demon's professional failing is liking the people he's meant to ruin.

He rather liked people. It was a major failing in a demon. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse.

Good Omens · Terry Pratchett