Douglas Preston Quotes & Sayings

#1. Dr. Albert Frock: Well, how goes the gradual extinction of the human race, Lieutenant?
Lt. Vincent D'Agosta: I'm doing what I can to keep it orderly.

Douglas Preston

#2. There is a mountain range behind the town, called the Sierra de Sangre de Cristo. It means the 'Blood of Christ Mountains' in Spanish.

Douglas Preston

#3. Everything he did, he did well, and as a result he was an accomplished asshole indeed.

Douglas Preston

#4. Hey, Margo, this looks like a big job. Why don't you send out for pizza? The best place in town is Antonio's. I recommend the green chili and pepperoni. Shall I fax the order now?

Douglas Preston

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

Douglas Preston

#6. He found Pendergast's cool gaze on him, and he fidgeted. He'd forgotten about those eyes. They made you feel like you had just been stripped of your secrets.

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#7. J. P. Morgan once said, If you want something too much, you will not succeed in getting it.

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

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#9. He had done the right thing and that was what counted. That was the best you could do in life. How others took it was beyond his control.

Douglas Preston

#10. The mandalas were meant to be objects of contemplation, aids to meditation, their proportions magically balanced to purify and calm the mind. To stare at a mandala was to experience, if only briefly, the nothingness that is at the heart of enlightenment.

Douglas Preston

#11. There are so many journalists out there, I hate to say it, who are lazy and don't do their research - and it shows.

Douglas Preston

#12. My first job was washing dishes in the basement of a nursing home for $2.10 an hour, and I learned as much about the value of hard work there as I ever did later.

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#13. nothing motivated a person quite as much as the desire for vengeance.

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#14. He had reached an age where he found the best way to deal with unpleasantness was to pretend it didn't exist.

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#15. So I'm in the American Secret Service? Damn."
"It was all reported in the press the next day.

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#16. Sometimes not knowing can be a lot worse than knowing - even if knowing proves to be very painful.

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#17. Hezekiah Pendergast," Constance continued, "was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius - and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own 'medicine': Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative.

Douglas Preston

#18. You could tell a lot about a person by meeting his brother.

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#19. 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.

Douglas Preston

#20. If you're honest with yourself, you can still feel the terrible weight of time pressing on you; that awful, relentless, bodily corruption that is happening constantly to us all.

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#21. How awful a knowledge of the truth can be.

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

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

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

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#25. I'm afraid I don't suffer petty bureaucrats gladly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nevertheless, you will find, Dr. Kelly, that humiliation and blackmail, when used judiciously, can be marvelously effective

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#26. The value of work? Have I taught them self-reliance? Have I taught them to take care of each

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#27. It's a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.

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#28. The truth shall make you free, but first it will make you miserable.

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#29. Lines from an old film came back to him unbidden: That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. You're an improbable person, and so am I.

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#30. We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.

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#31. Don't live in the past - you will know what you've lost but not what you've found?

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#32. What you're suggesting is that Hezekiah's elixir caused epigenetic changes. Such changes can and do get passed down the generations. Environmental poisons are the leading cause of epigenetic changes.

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#33. There's a respected theory in astronomy called Panspermia," Glinn finally continued. "It holds that life may have spread through the galaxy in bacteria or spores carried on meteorites or in clouds of dust. But

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#34. To put that statistic into personal terms, make a list of the nineteen people closest to you: All but one will die. (This

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#35. if the count of monte cristo could escape the chateau d'if, william smithback could escape from river oaks

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#36. The point of a cruise ship is the cruise itself. But an ocean liner's job is to transport people on a schedule. The

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#37. God bless us, everyone," Smithback intoned. Margo punched him playfully.

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#38. What we have here is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

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#39. Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane.

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#40. An old poet, Robert Herrick, put it like this: " Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun; And, as a vapour or a drop of rain Once lost, can ne'er be found again.

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#41. 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.

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#42. 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?

Douglas Preston

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

Douglas Preston

#44. over his shoulder at Rabiner. The agent had a wolfish smirk on his face. "Boss, I like the way you think," he said. Imhof pulled the keyboard toward him and began typing. Then he stared at the screen for a long moment while Coffey waited in growing impatience.

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#45. One can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large.

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#46. was afraid you wouldn't be permitted to leave the country for ages.

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#47. Lead me into all misfortune. Only by that path can I transform the negative into the positive.

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#48. As I get older, Vincent, I have come to prefer a quiet evening at home to a bracing exchange of gunfire in the dark.

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#49. We listen to the unspoken, we gaze upon the unseen. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

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#50. because it's not enough to have a dream - you need financing.

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#51. Does a toilet seat get ass?

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#52. intentional: if you meddle in our affairs, we'll

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#53. Chauncy made a huge effort to control himself. "I had lunch at Maisie's Diner."
"And?"
"And what? It was the most revolting lunch it has been my misfortune to consume."
"And after?"
"Diarrhea, of course.

Douglas Preston

#54. This inferno of contagion destroyed thousands of societies and millions of people, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from California to New England, from the Amazon rainforest to the tundra of Hudson Bay. It is what destroyed T1, the City of the Jaguar, and the ancient people of Mosquitia.

Douglas Preston

#55. As we hoped, our kids began to learn Italian. One day Isaac sat down to dinner, looked at the plate of pasta we'd prepared, made a face, and said, "Che schifo!" a vulgar expression meaning "Gross!" We were so proud.

Douglas Preston

#56. guard posts and triple fencing had been bolstered by cutting-edge instrumentation, including laser-beam "lattices

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#57. I have often found it true that the louder a person speaks, the less they have to say.

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#58. You cannot stare evil in the face; it has no face. It has no body, no bones, no blood. Any attempt to describe it ends in glibness and self-delusion.

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#59. Sleep is an unfortunate biological requirement that both wastes time and leaves one vulnerable.

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#60. I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.

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#61. I have found that liars in the end communicate more truth than do truth tellers." "How's that?" "Because truth is the safest lie.

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#62. 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.

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#63. Not only eating Lieutenant, but slobbering over the food as well. Clearly, he, she, or it has no manners.

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#64. You just put your boot so far up his ass, he'll have to eat his dinner with a shoehorn." "I can always count on you for a suitable bon mot.

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#65. to authorize that personally.

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#66. Trying to fulfill earthly desires was like carrying water to the sea; a never- ending task, and an ultimately useless one.

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#67. who the heck is dorothy gale?

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#68. Already up to his waist in the quaking bog, Pendergast stopped struggling and stared up at his assassin. The icy glitter in the pale gray eyes spoke more eloquently of his hatred and despair than any words he might have spoken, and it shook Esterhazy to the core.

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#69. Jennie confirmed my suspicions that television advertising is directed mainly at people with the iq of a pongid

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

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#71. God give me chastity, but not right now.

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#72. The shudder of fear is as sensual as the shudder of pleasure, if not more so.

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#73. My hobbies are mountain biking, horseback riding and packing, canoeing and kayaking, hiking, camping, cooking, and skiing.

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

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#75. This was an intentional frame.

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

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#77. That's what counted. It was more than a security system: it was a state of mind. Although Herkmoor had suffered many escape attempts, some extraordinarily clever, none had succeeded - and every guard at Herkmoor, every employee, was acutely aware of that fact

Douglas Preston

#78. But we were just picnicking friends

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#79. The Monster's crimes were so horrific that a mere man could not possibly have committed them. Satan, in the end, had to be invoked.

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#80. I hate crew cuts.

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

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#82. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

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#83. 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.

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#84. When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea.

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#85. Most people are about as aware of their surroundings as a sea cucumber.

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

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#87. 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.

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#88. 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.

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#89. there was no reason why having a high iq would somehow protect you from the vicissitudes of life

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#90. 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.

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#91. The third board popped off. The opening was now big enough to squeeze through. The dogs in town were barking hysterically.

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#92. 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.

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#93. 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.

Douglas Preston