Quotes from Douglas Preston

A mosquito head with huge bug eyes and an oily feeding tube was affixed to a monstrous, batlike body the color of liver. The wings were webbed with engorged blood vessels, and from its belly hung two rows of hairy, withered dugs.

The last thing he wanted to be was another chump. If small-time investors knew how they were being reamed out by the big boys every day, they'd never invest again.

to authorize that personally.

A humane research environment for chimpanzees is very, very expensive. I'm sure Miller would have been much happier if we'd locked all the chimps in four-by-five cages. When we lost our funding, we had to shut down the project immediately. This was a terrible loss to science. I can't even begin to tell you. But it also affected Jennie. It was the beginning of the end.

She called it the Catastrophe-Inducing Agency

Intuition, Pendergast knew, was the end result of the most sophisticated kind of reasoning.

man and ape are separated more by ego than anatomy

spaces again. I guess one citation wasn't enough." Pendergast pulled out the previous ticket. "You mean this?" "That's right." Pendergast neatly tore it in half and tucked the pieces back into his pocket. The chief frowned.

She, too, had an air of discipline and precision about her, but it was at odds with her aristocratic face, mane of rich mahogany hair, brown eyes, and civilian dress. The others were kitted out in body armor, helmets, night-vision gear, and assault weaponry: all she had was a string of pearls. Who in God's name would wear a string of pearls on a mission like this?

the value of work? Have I taught them self-reliance? Have I taught them to take care of each

like having death poke his stinking mug into your face to make you think about things.

Sen. Proxmire, the watchdog of the scientific community, has tracked down and reported taxpayer-financed scientific research that is redundant, unnecessary, or just plain silly. Those projects that represent an egregious waste of taxpayer money are given his highest award, known as the Golden Fleece. Many of the projects that win the award seem amusing, until one examines the cost.

The Stanford-Binet curve demonstrates that seventy percent of human beings fall in the average or below-average range in intelligence. In other words, more than two-thirds of all human beings are average, which is stupid enough, or they're clinical morons.

Coldmoon shook his head. The case had gone from being open, to closed, to open again, so fast he felt almost dizzy. "Let this be a lesson to you, my friend, on the dangers of drawing conclusions too early," Pendergast told him. "As H. L. Mencken once said, 'There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.' This was that neat, plausible, and wrong solution.

It's not enough to figure out how to do something. You must also analyze every possible path to failure. Only then can you be certain of success.

This discovery will draw us closer to the day when humanity can cast aside its evil ways and eventually join the galactic civilization.

Our leaders are morally bankrupt, shameless hypocrites, feigning piety but devoid of real spirituality.

Fou, très fou! Why, in New Orleans I would have finished

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

The question failure asks is: what don't we know that we don't know?

the southern gothic trappings, the rumors and whispers, were too delicious to ruin with the winter wind of truth.

The second voyage, carrying soldiers from different parts of Spain and teeming cargo of livestock, was a Noah's ark of pestilence.

he was now feeling burnt out to the point of carbonization.

just adapted the process to the ocean, treating it mathematically like a sea of interacting particles and forces.