Quotes from Douglas Preston

I would have to say the novel 'War and Peace' influenced me more than any other book. This greatest of novels demonstrated to me the enormous power of literature and fired me up with a desire to become a writer, to participate in what I considered then to be the greatest of all endeavors.

I'm pretty much a 9-to-5 kind of guy. I usually get to work about 8 in the morning, and I work until 4 or 5, and sometimes I work on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Pretty much I keep the same hours as an accountant or clerk or whatever.

The twentieth century showed us the evil face of physics. This century will show us the evil face of biology.

Fortune makes promises to many, keeps them to none. Live for each day, live for the hours, since nothing is forever yours.

When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

There was a pause while Pendergast considered this. "I prefer hypocrisy to poverty.

The Tyrannosaurus rex was a creature of the jungle. She lived in the deepest forests and swamps of North America, not long after it had broken off from the ancient continent of Laurasia. Her territory encompassed more than five hundred square miles, and it stretched from the shores of the ancient Niobrara inland sea to the foothills of the newly minted Rocky Mountains.

Perhaps it's not a matter of unimportant sites, but unimportant archaeologists.

One might say that modern Honduran history began in 1873, when Jules Verne introduced Americans to the banana in his novel Around the World in 80 Days, where he praised it as being "as healthy as bread and as succulent as cream.

My idle curiosity might lead to something more official, if the lieutenant feels his work is being hindered by an officious, small-minded, self-important bureaucrat. Not you, of course. I speak in general terms only.

While dead men tell no tales, their corpses often speak volumes.

Wine is like many of the fine experiences in life which take time and experience to extract their full pleasure and meaning.

Religion arose as an effort to explicate the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable, make bearable the unbearable. Belief in a higher power became the most powerful innovation in late human evolution. Tribes with religion had an advantage over those without. They had direction and purpose, motivation and a mission. The survival value of religion was so spectacular that the thirst for belief became embedded in the human genome.

You see, when someone says "it's impossible,' I have this very bad habit, I can't help myself, I immediately contradict that person in the most positive terms possible. A very bad habit, but one that I find hard to break.

quotation from Einstein: 'The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.' I would suggest to Dr. Chauncy that in combination, the two qualities are even more alarming.

D'Agosta had long ago learned, when working with Pendergast, to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight.

People need history in order to know themselves

F. Scott Fitzgerald's quotation: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function?

No civilization has survived forever. All move toward dissolution, one after the other, like waves of the sea falling upon the shore. None, including ours, is exempt from the universal fate.

Not in my swamp, with my alligators. -Pendergast

Sometimes it takes courage—maybe all the courage you've got—to just live life.

Human beings are disgustingly predictable, and this is as true of psychopaths as it is of grandmothers.

and they've concluded that our democratic system is an abject failure. And they think we Americans are weak, lazy, whiny, self-important global has-beens, inflated with a false sense of entitlement. In this, they are probably correct.

The poison in the arrow that had struck her was, in chemical structure, like curare; it paralyzed first, killed second. It is not a merciful death: one dies fully conscious and aware of one's surroundings.