Quotes from Douglas Preston

Bizarreness, like salt, gives flavor to existence. Without it, life would be as long and tedious as an opera by Wagner.

an amazing set of knockers:

Incidents of Travel

The Maya created a vibrant and brilliant society that, in the end, failed to adjust to a changing environment and the needs of its people;

Bah! The infirmities of age. What a bore. We gain honors, age, and wealth, and then just when we're ready to enjoy them, Father Time comes swooping down and screws up our bodies. Pulvis et umbra sumus and all that.

If Albuquerque was the ugly, dusty ass end of nowhere, then Farmington was the inflamed boil on that ass. If

Pendergast moved with a feline grace, using the waxing moon as his only source of light

They'd ended up ordering pizza.

We took canoes into the heart of darkness.

When I walk to the pulpit on a Sunday and see my parishioners seated so properly in their rows, so neatly dressed, so assured and expectant, I am filled with a sense of panic. I have not done what I set out to do. In forty years, what have I given these people? Only a sense of complacency?

He also said you never really knew what kind of side effects might pop up until at least ten thousand people had taken a drug

artificial intelligence.

Some things transcend even lunacy.

Staten Island ferry

When mercury vapours are inhaled over a long enough period of time—particularly, for our purposes, in the close quarters of a hat-making operation—toxic and irreversible effects almost inevitably follow. One develops tremors of the hands; blackened teeth; slurred speech. In severe cases, dementia or outright insanity can occur. Hence the term mad as a hatter.

in our culture, women can do anything a man can. and vice versa. don alfonso's eyebrows shot up. i do not believe it. it's true, sally said defiantly. in America, the women hunt while the men have babies?

Why was it, Corvus wondered, as he stood before the august presence with a genial smile sculpted on his face, that one always whispered in the presence of kings and cretins?

the Mosquitia civilization vanished everywhere all at once—in a sudden, civilization-wide catastrophe.

Criticism is a profession which allows one a certain license to be vicious outside the bounds of normal civilized behavior.

Every year he would select a few projects that he felt had no merit and would award them a golden fleece. As in "fleecing" the taxpayers.

It was a show, Corvus knew: underneath the genteel exterior was a man with all the refinement and sensitivity of a ferret.

Vivir causa daños cerebrales.

like me, you prefer the company of fine books to that of other people.

anyway, the money was great, but the corporate world just wasn't to my liking. i guess i'm not a team player--or an ass-kisser.