99+ Douglas Preston Quotes on Pendergast, Gideon's Sword and Monster - Quotes.pub

Here you will find all the famous Douglas Preston quotes. There are more than 99+ quotes in our Douglas Preston quotes collection. We have collected all of them and made stunning Douglas Preston wallpapers & posters out of those quotes. You can use this wallpapers & posters on mobile, desktop, print and frame them or share them on the various social media platforms. You can download the quotes images in various different sizes for free. In the below list you can find quotes in various categories like Pendergast, Gideon's Sword and Monster

Did you know that research on gorillas has shown that they communicate using gestures? Now listen to this. An ASL-like language may very well have preceded spoken language in human development. A kind of language with gestures and vocalizations. Gradually the vocalizations took over from the gestures, because it’s so much more convenient to speak than gesture.

Given the two six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon you drank, I’d say that by midshift your blood alcohol concentration must have been around 0.2 percent, leaving you in no condition to notice any disturbance, much less investigate it.

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?

Russo drew his service revolver and pointed it at Jennie. Sandy, of course, went berserk, screaming and grabbing at the gun and wrapping himself around Jennie. He called Russo the most horrid names, fascist pig and that sort of thing. It must have been just awful, thinking this moron was going to shoot Jennie. I’m sure he would have if Sandy hadn’t stopped him. Sandy saved Jennie’s life.

He was glad to see the agent back in form, at least superficially, his finely chiseled face so pale that it might have been crafted from marble, his eyes especially bright in the cool wash of natural light that filled the space. He was, however, as thin as a damn scarecrow.

Jennie never did reject me, however. Oh no. She loved me to the very end. Her love for me was more powerful than anything the Archibalds could undermine.

But all was not well; a creeping rot – environmental, economic, and social – had been undermining its society for some time and would eventually lead to destruction.

The ultimate offense was the idea that Europeans “discovered” the New World to begin with, as if the people living here didn’t exist before Europeans saw them.

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.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” Pendergast murmured.

Incidents of Travel.

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

She learned her first two signs five weeks later, on – let’s see here – June 4, 1967. They were hug and me. On June 6, she spontaneously signed Hug me Jennie to Mrs. Archibald, her surrogate mother. Mrs. Archibald was under the impression that Jennie’s first sign had been directed at her. I didn’t correct that misapprehension. Why? I should suppose the reason’s obvious.

I felt that I was witnessing the beginnings of a great sea change in America. I was deeply moved. Through this terrible ordeal of Vietnam, I believed, we might finally see America becoming what the founding fathers had envisioned, a nation with a moral purpose in the world and a nation that cared about all its citizens. We might see the end of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger version of realpolitik. It hasn’t turned out that way, but then we are all a little older and wiser.

When the team excavated, they uncovered the shattered ruins of a fortress, over fifteen centuries old, with massive walls and eight towers, matching the description in the Koran. They also figured out what had happened: The constant removal of water from the watering hole undermined the fortress, which one day collapsed into a sinkhole and was buried by drifting sands. The legend recorded in the Koran was based on a real event.

What? This cleric wants to give Jennie religious instruction? How peverse!” I explained that he was really a harmless old man who Jennie was quite fond of. Dr. Prentiss found the whole idea diabolical. It would ruin her experiment! Well, I thought about that for all of two seconds and decided that what was right for Jennie was not necessarily right for Dr. Prentiss and her experiments. There are times, you know, when a mother simply has to do what she thinks is right.

The fact is, you lied about hearing something because you didn’t want the management to know you were drunk on duty. Isn’t that right?

I have my books. I don’t live in the actual world.

We didn’t use food as a reward. As some previous ASL researchers did. Jennie’s reward was making herself understood. That is, she was rewarded like a human child would be rewarded. We wanted to replicate the way a human child acquires language. You don’t cram food into an infant every time she says something, now, do you? Of course not.

A series of droughts between AD 760 and 800 seem to have been the trigger for famine that hit the common people disproportionately hard. It was the last straw for a society teetering on the edge of alienation and conflict.

She created a new world for herself. It blew my mind to see this animal acquire language. And then literally reshape her world with it.

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.

At the rear of the courtyard, several chairs had been placed beneath a vined trellis, and it was here Pickett at last spied Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. He was wearing a white linen suit similar to the one Pickett recalled from their meeting a fortnight or so earlier at a rooftop bar in Miami Beach. One leg was flung over the other, and beautifully made loafers of buttery leather were on his feet.

Animal behaviorists have noted again and again that predatory species often kill when they have no desire to eat. They are killing because the instinct to kill is very strong.

Instead she violently signed Bite, angry, angry, bite! with both hands right in my face. It was an astonishing and very intimidating performance.

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

The tree crowns were packed together like puffballs, displaying every possible hue, tint, and shade of green. Chartreuse, emerald, lime, aquamarine, teal, bottle, glaucous, asparagus, olive, celadon, jade, malachite – mere words are inadequate to express the chromatic infinities.

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.

A 90 percent mortality rate is high enough: It does not just kill people; it annihilates societies; it destroys languages, religions, histories, and cultures. It chokes off the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next.

I wish you’d told me I was going to be piloting a Yellow Submarine.” “To what end? It would only have worried you. These DSVs are idiotproof.

You mean, let our most excellent Congress deal with this situation in the same way it has handled our other pressing national problems, such as global warming, terrorism, education, and our crumbling infrastructure?

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?

Even with the intense excitement and high spirits, the hike back to camp was grueling, as the steep hillsides were impossible to descend except in a semi-controlled sort of falling slide.

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.

I have not felt her presence, as I had always believed I should if she should predecease me. Where is she? I am afraid for her, and for myself.

We took canoes into the heart of darkness.

Tyrannosaur Canyon Utopia The Codex Tales of the Dark 1–3 Ribbons of Time Dark.

Retribution is just outstanding.

But when I open them up, I find that they’re equal! And they both have achieved the same destiny: my zinc gurney. Why, then, did he tire himself out poring over so many books? Boh! Take my advice, journalist: eat, drink, and enjoy yourself –.

At what point in evolution did man acquire the knowledge of good and evil, and thus the capacity to be damned? In this light, the story of Adam and Eve takes on deeper significance. It is a parable of evolution.

In the most deadly variety of smallpox, the hemorrhagic form, called the bloody pox or black pox, the skin turns a deep purple or takes on a charred look, and comes off in sheets. The victim often “bleeds out,” blood pouring from every orifice in the body. It is extremely contagious. Unlike most other viruses, smallpox can survive and remain virulent for months or years outside the body in clothing, blankets, and sickrooms.

The myths of the White City, the City of the Monkey God, a Casa Blanca or Kaha Kamasa, have a similar arc: There was once a great city in the mountains struck down by a series of catastrophes, after which the people decided the gods were angry and left, leaving behind their possessions. Thereafter it was shunned as a cursed place, forbidden, visiting death on those who dared enter.

It seems that a civilization-wide catastrophe involving the “death” of all these cities occurred at approximately the same time, around 1500 – the time of the Spanish conquest. Yet the Spanish never conquered the region; they never explored or even penetrated these remote jungles.

Nobody knows what language is. It isn’t just speech, that’s for sure. But try to explain that to some of these reductionist structural linguists.

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.

He could now see inside the sneaker. It was filled with something, a pulpy red-pink with a shard of pure white projecting up from the middle. Ward froze, his mind not quite able to process what he was staring at.

To most people, Metcalf had discovered, silence was even more unbearable than pointed questioning.

If this sounds like strange talk from a scientist – so be it. If there is one thing I have learned from a lifetime study of science, it is that the world is not a place we human beings will ever comprehend. Understand, yes; comprehend, no.

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

Even the charms of paradise can pale with time.

1
2
3
4
5