"If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it."

"Since that time, I've had many similar moments, and I can never hear the words 'family' and 'home' without feeling that they sound strange, never simply hear them and let them go. When I stop to examine them, though, the words seem hollow, seem to rattle at my feet like empty cans."

"My family always helped me. I had people around me who always pushed me to be the best: my dad, my mum. My dad used to play and coach as well. But I wasn't born with shiny things."

"With each day that our huge ship was on the ocean, my sense of being further and further away from my loved ones, my home, and my environment grew stronger."

"I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... Let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves."

"I couldn’t miss Percy’s fifteenth birthday,” Poseidon said. “Why, if this were Sparta, Percy would be a man today!”'That’s true,” Paul said. “I used to teach ancient history.”Poseidon’s eyes twinkled. “That’s me. Ancient history."

"Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely."

"The famous atheist Christopher Hitchens once declared that ‘You’re expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon, towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks.’ Presumably that was what he had in mind when conceiving his three children."

"Emotional intelligence begins to develop in the earliest years. All the small exchanges children have with their parents, teachers, and with each other carry emotional messages."

"Darling Daddy,This is Rose.The shed needs new wires now it has blown up.Caddy is bringing home rock-bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you.Love, Rose."