Rachel

“Here's what it's like to go into hell: anything horrible that came before this crash is replayed for you, at rapid speed, with heightened lightning, with louder sound, with brighter colors, with higher production values than you can imagine. You can't stop it, and you can't stop it, and you can't stop it.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Labors of Hercules Beal

“You know, Beal, you've been fighting a whole lot of monsters this year, monsters much more real than any the mythical Hercules fought. And you've been fighting stuff that's come at you out of the blue. And one of it is fair, and none of it is right, and none of it is anything you've deserved. That's the world, Beal. But you haven't crumbled, have you? And you haven't disappeared. You're still here. And the truth is, no matter what happened with your parents, and no matter what happens with Elly, you're still going to be here." -Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Labors of Hercules Beal

“We are here to help you carry the sky when you have to, and we are here to help you put it down when you need to. Why else would anyone ever become a teacher?”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Labors of Hercules Beal

“I know this doesn't sound like some sort of earth-shattering new idea that's going to change the universe. But I wonder if what Hercules was most afraid of when he was holding up the sky wasn't that he was going to have to hold it up forever. It was that he was going to have to hold it up forever while he was by himself. THat's a kind of scary thing to think about.

Maybe, the stuff we hold up, we don't have to hold up by ourselves all the time. Maybe sometimes we can let someone else hold is up too. Maybe that's how we can get by. Maybe.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, The Labors of Hercules Beal