Manuela

“Micail nodded, looking down at her. “You seem so fragile, but sometimes I think you are the strongest of us all . . .”
“I am strong because we are together,” Tiriki murmured as he left her.
<...>
Were we disembodied spirits, she thought warmly, still I would know him.
<...>
The bond between them went beyond the senses of the flesh.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon

“I wanted to go back to a time before all the sacrifices had been made. Before I had experienced so much pain. But making things right could not mean rewinding the clock. Even Kronos hadn't had that much power over time.
I suspected that wasn't what Jason Grace would want, either.
When he'd told me to remember being human, he'd meant building on pain and tragedy, overcoming it, learning from it. That was something gods never did. We just complained.
To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.”
― Rick Riordan, The Tower of Nero

“He had been born in Mussolini’s Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He’d emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He’d been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He’d wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he’d struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man. Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.”
― Rick Riordan, The Tower of Nero

“Before the gods, nothing matters save what you may create for yourself.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lady of Avalon