Quotes from Douglas Preston

Are you surprised? He doesn't believe in any power greater than himself. And we all know he's God-like anyway—in his own mind, at least.

the New York Public Library.

Terrestrial lidar is currently being tested in self-driving vehicles and "intelligent" cruise control, which use lidar to map the ever-shifting environment around a car moving down a roadway

One biologist told me that what probably saved many indigenous Indian cultures from complete extinction were the mass rapes of native women by European men; many of the babies from those rapes inherited European genetic resistance to disease.

As is typical of Maya inscriptions, not a single one at Copán mentions a commoner. Working folk had to build all those buildings. Farmers had to feed all those laborers along with the holy lords and nobles. This type of class division usually works when everyone believes they are part of a system, with each person occupying a valued place in society and contributing to the vital ceremonies that maintain the cosmic order.

I don't know jack about wine, sorry." "You should learn. It is one of the true and ancient pleasures that make human existence tolerable.

Finally she spoke."We don't have much time." She paused, looking at him steadily. "I need to tell you something, Tom." "What?" "It seems I've fallen in love with you." Reality returned with sudden clarity. Tom couldn't quite speak. She went on briskly. "Anyway, there—now it's said." "But what about—?" "Julian?

To one side, a vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, polished to a gem-like brilliance, sat on a flatbed trailer, ready to be taken to its new owner. Constance looked from Pendergast to the Rolls and back again. "I really don't need two, you know," he said.

Project The Forgotten Room Impact The Third Gate The Monster of Florence Terminal Freeze    (with Mario Spezi) Deep Storm

the partition was rolled up for ventilation, and she was lying in her hammock reading one of the books Vernon had brought, a thriller called utopia.

Scruffy logic?" "Loose and fast logic. A way to attack intractable problems.

sometimes she didn't know her own strength, and she didn't understand that people were a lot more fragile than she was. Sometimes she was rougher than she intended, you see. Did you know that a full-grown female chimpanzee is three to five times stronger than a man?

The whole city was on the verge of panic.

Then there was that absurd syntax business again. No language without syntax. Well, what about Latin! These assholes didn't even know Latin! Where did these guys go to school?

In my Father's house are many mansions.

Mrs. Trask turned to him. "When Mr. Pendergast asks for something, we do not say no.

The dangers of exploring Mosquitia go beyond the natural deterrents. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Eighty percent of the cocaine from South America destined for the United States is shipped through Honduras, most of it via Mosquitia. Drug cartels rule much of the surrounding countryside and towns.

The buckskin shirt launched one of the most voracious collecting careers in American history. Heye became obsessed with all things Native American, and he would eventually amass a collection of a million pieces. In 1916, he established the Museum of the American Indian on upper Broadway in New York City to house his collection. (In 1990, the museum moved to Washington, DC, and became part of the Smithsonian.) Heye

That European diseases ran rampant in the New World is an old story, but recent discoveries in genetics, epidemiology, and archaeology have painted a picture of the die-off that is truly apocalyptic; the lived experience of the indigenous communities during this genocide exceeds the worst that any horror movie has imagined.

The world's last great pandemic was the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918 that killed a hundred million people—about 5 percent of the world's population. If a pandemic like that were to happen again, it would spread faster and might be impossible to contain.

There may be no better use of taxpayer dollars than in funding the NIH; it is a shining example of something our government does extremely well

Zero-sum games deal with resources that neither increase nor decrease in amount—they only shift from one player to the other.

The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid. When you give an Einstein two centuries to perfect his science, you give a thousand others two centuries to perfect their brutality.

Anyway, these conclusions came from people who had never spent any time with chimpanzees. You can't tell anything from a two-hour videotape. I spent five years with five chimpanzees. There are so many modes of communication between human and chimp that can't be quantified. Body language. Vehemence and speed of gesture, facial expression. You had to be there with Jennie to understand the depth of communication. With our enemies out there, and a Senator against us, we got hammered.