Douglas Preston Quotes & Sayings

Make sure your family and loved ones don't interrupt you during your
writing time. If you're a lawyer or doctor, friends don't just stop by the office to chat or interrupt you from your work. But for some reason, people think writing is different. It isn't, and you need to make clear that this is sacred time. — Douglas Preston

Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. — Douglas Preston

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

Sleep is an unfortunate biological requirement that both wastes time and leaves one vulnerable. — Douglas Preston

nothing motivated a person quite as much as the desire for vengeance. — Douglas Preston

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

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

God give me chastity, but not right now. — Douglas Preston

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

Don't live in the past - you will know what you've lost but not what you've found? — Douglas Preston

was afraid you wouldn't be permitted to leave the country for ages. — Douglas Preston

Once again, we shall have to operate not only outside the box, but outside the room containing the box. — Douglas Preston

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

Like having death poke his stinking mug into your face to make you think about things. — Douglas Preston

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

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

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. — Douglas Preston

Where are you from, Mr. Pendergast? Can't quite place the accent."
"New Orleans."
"What a coincidence! I went there for Mardi Gras once."
"How nice for you. I myself have never attended."
Ludwig paused, the smile frozen on his face, wondering how to steer the conversation onto a more pertinent topic. — Douglas Preston

There was a pause while Pendergast considered this. I prefer hypocrisy to poverty. — Douglas Preston

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

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

It's a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. — Douglas Preston

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 — Douglas Preston

All power structures, by their very nature, eventually get taken over by psychopaths. Almost all governments in the world have been taken over by gifted psychopaths who have a great command of human psychology and use normal people to their advantage. This race of pathological deviants can't feel compassion, they have no conscience. They have an insatiable need for power - and they rule the world. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

Boxer altered his course subtly, as if that was the way he'd already been going, not looking up to acknowledge he had heard, letting his attitude convey the contempt he felt for the scrawny foreman. He stopped in front of the guy, staring at the man's dusty little workboots. Small feet, small dick. Slowly, he glanced up. Welcome to the world, Pee-Wee. Take a look at this. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea. — Douglas Preston

who the heck is dorothy gale? — Douglas Preston

The shudder of fear is as sensual as the shudder of pleasure, if not more so. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

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

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. — Douglas Preston

Do what? Kill me? Then my blood would be on your hands - more than it already is - as well as that of your four dear friends. Because you, frater, are responsible for all this. You know it. You made me what I am." "I made you nothing." "Well said! Well said!" A dry, almost desiccated laugh came over the tiny speaker. Listening, — Douglas Preston

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

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

Gideon," he said, "think for a minute about the qualities that a leader - even a co-leader - is required to have. He's a team player. He's good at inspiring others. He's able to hide his true feelings, put up a false front when necessary. He projects confidence at all times - even if he doesn't feel confident. He can't be a freelancer. And he's certainly not a loner. Now, tell me: do any of these qualities describe you? — Douglas Preston

When you lose, don't lose the lesson. — Douglas Preston

Back in their special forces days, there were times when Pendergast had disappeared just like this - no word to anyone - only to reappear later with some important objective accomplished. It had happened often enough that their team developed a slang term for it - Don't pull a Pendergast meant "Don't disappear without explanation. — Douglas Preston

There is an old French curse: may your fondest wish come true. If this treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth through overpopulation. If it is dear and available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the social contract. Either way, it will lead directly to human misery. What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and unhappiness? — Douglas Preston

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

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

You think of yourself as an "individual person", with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is an illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between- these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled. — Douglas Preston

Mitochondrial DNA is completely separate from a person's regular DNA. It's a bit of genetic material residing in the mitochondria of every cell in the body, and it is inherited unchanged from generation to generation, through the female line. That means all the descendants - male and female - of a particular woman will have identical mitochondrial DNA, which we call mtDNA. This kind of DNA is extremely useful in forensic work, and separate databases are kept of it. — Douglas Preston

PEE-WEE BOXER SURVEYED THE JOBSITE WITH DISGUST. THE FOREMAN was a scumbag. The crew were a bunch of losers. Worst of all, the guy handling the Cat didn't know jack about hydraulic excavators. Maybe it was a union thing; maybe he was friends with somebody; either way, he was jerking the machine around like it was his first day at Queens Vo-Tech — Douglas Preston

to authorize that personally. — Douglas Preston

The value of work? Have I taught them self-reliance? Have I taught them to take care of each — Douglas Preston

he didn't murder Charles Duchamp, and he didn't murder Michael Decker. His — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

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

His face. Fenton was never one to like a slow day. The look was enough to tell Barnaby that something big had just come down. "Hutch?" "Hmmm?" Fenton went on, breathlessly. "The Broadbent place was robbed. I got one of the sons on the phone now." Hutch Barnaby didn't move a muscle. "Robbed of what?" "Everything." Fenton's black eyes glittered with relish. Barnaby sipped his coffee, sipped again, and then lowered his chair to the floor with a small clunk. Damn. As Barnaby and Fenton drove out the Old Santa Fe Trail, Fenton talked about the robbery. The collection, he'd heard, was worth half a billion. If the truth were anything close to that, Fenton said, it would be front-page-New-York-Times. He, Fenton, on the front page of the Times. Can you imagine — 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. — Douglas Preston

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

Zero-sum games deal with resources that neither increase nor decrease in amount - they only shift from one player to the other. Given your present frame of mind, were you to speak now, I'm afraid you might say something rash. I would feel it incumbent to offer a rejoinder. As a result of this exchange, you would be mortified and humiliated, which - as dictated by the rules of game theory - would increase my influence and status at your expense. — Douglas Preston

guard posts and triple fencing had been bolstered by cutting-edge instrumentation, including laser-beam "lattices — Douglas Preston

The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid. — Douglas Preston

J. P. Morgan once said, If you want something too much, you will not succeed in getting it. — Douglas Preston

I hate crew cuts. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

Steve Forman strafes the south Florida scene with Boca Knights, an outrageously funny mystery novel with a raft of offbeat characters and prose that moves trippingly off the pen. His main man, Eddie Perlmutter, ex-Boston cop attempting semi-retirement in Boca Raton like a fish trying to retire out of the water, is a character for the ages. Carl Hiaasen, watch your back. — Douglas Preston

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

Most people are about as aware of their surroundings as a sea cucumber. — Douglas Preston

The town had a faint air of benign neglect that only added to its charm: a seaside village with white clapboard buildings, seagulls wheeling overhead, uneven brick sidewalks and local shops. They passed a gas station, several old storefronts with plate-glass windows, a diner, a funeral parlor, a movie theater turned into a bookstore, and an eighteenth-century sea captain's mansion, complete with widow's walk. A sign out front identified it as the Exmouth Historical Society and Museum. — Douglas Preston

I can scarcely believe the cruelty of the last century. It staggers the soul. — Douglas Preston

My hobbies are mountain biking, horseback riding and packing, canoeing and kayaking, hiking, camping, cooking, and skiing. — Douglas Preston

Pirate Hunters is a fantastic book, an utterly engrossing and satisfying read. It tells the story of the hunt for the rare wreck of a pirate ship, which had been captained by one of the most remarkable pirates in history. This is a real-life Treasure Island, complete with swashbuckling, half-crazy treasure hunters and vivid Caribbean settings-a story for the ages. — Douglas Preston

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

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. — Douglas Preston

But we were just picnicking friends — Douglas Preston

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

A striking man stood in the doorway behind him: perhaps sixty-five, with a great shock of white hair. The hair was the only thing that looked at all old about him; he was close to six and a half feet tall, with a craggy, handsome face bronzed by the sun, a trim, athletic bearing, wearing a blue blazer over a crisp white cotton shirt and tan slacks. He radiated good health and vigorous living. His hands were massive. — Douglas Preston

Sometimes not knowing can be a lot worse than knowing - even if knowing proves to be very painful. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

How awful a knowledge of the truth can be. — Douglas Preston

The truth shall make you free, but first it will make you miserable. — Douglas Preston

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: "We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities." (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.) — Douglas Preston

Launches the reader into a story of science and ancient mystery that will blow your mind: [From New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston] — Douglas Preston

There is more in the world than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Doctor - or in the Merck Manual. — Douglas Preston

intentional: if you meddle in our affairs, we'll — Douglas Preston

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

The Maya built with stone, while this region had been extensively settled by a separate, sophisticated culture that built great earthen mounds. This was an entirely new culture. Even as Strong's work showed definitively that Mosquitia was not part of the Maya realm, however, his discoveries raised more questions than they answered. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

nothing is impossible. you just need to learn how to bend the rules. — Douglas Preston

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

God bless us, everyone," Smithback intoned. Margo punched him playfully. — Douglas Preston

One can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large. — Douglas Preston

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

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. — Douglas Preston

if the count of monte cristo could escape the chateau d'if, william smithback could escape from river oaks — Douglas Preston

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

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

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. — Douglas Preston

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. — Douglas Preston

This was an intentional frame. — Douglas Preston

Carroting, you must understand, was a process by which animal fur is bathed in a solution of mercury nitrate, in order to render the hairs more supple, thus producing a superior felt." At this last word, he threw a significant glance in my direction. "Felt," I repeated. "You mean, for the making of hats?" "Precisely. The solution is of an orange colour, hence the term carroting. However, this process had rather severe side effects on those who worked with it, which is why its use today is much reduced. 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. — Douglas Preston

You could tell a lot about a person by meeting his brother. — Douglas Preston