"Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths, all faiths, are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. The church consists of a brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control."

"Nothing is more creative... nor destructive... than a brilliant mind with a purpose."

"I love the gray area between right and wrong."

"Buddha had said:"Each of us is a God. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom."

"I write seven days a week, starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, including Christmas."

"The mind of had the ability to alter the state of matter itself, and, more important, the mind had the power to encourage the physical world to move in a specific direction."

"He had been haunted his whole life by a mildcase of claustrophobia-the vestige of a childhood incident he had never quite overcome.Langdon's aversion to closed spaces was by no means debilitating, but it had always frustrated him.It manifested itself in subtle ways. He avoided enclosed sports like racquetball or squash, and he hadgladly paid a small fortune for his airy, high-ceilinged Victorian home even though economical facultyhousing was readily available. Langdon had often suspected his attraction to the art world as a youngboy sprang from his love of museums' wide open spaces."

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards?"

"Emotionless tone hurting as much as the news."

"Darkness feeds on apathy."

"Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base."

"Langdon turned to Sophie. "Who is that? What... happened?"Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur made by Acme Orthopedic."

"Leonardo believed his research had thepotential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence ofan energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected that the molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine that there is a single force moving within all of us."

"If we don't embrace them, then we are as undeserving of life as the caveman who freezes to death because he's afraid to start a fire."

"Good science fiction has its roots in good science."

"Everything does fall. It must be gravity."

"For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination - a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science's ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith!"

"I am the shade. Through the dolent city, i flee. Through the eternal woe, i take flight.."

"Since the beginning of time, the ignorant have always screamed the loudest...They celebrated their intolerance as proof of their convictions. Now after all these years, mankind had finally managed to utterly erode everything that had once been so beautiful about Jesus."

"Oftentimes, those special brains, the ones that are capable of focusing more intently than others, do so at the expense of emotional maturity."

"If antimatter and matter make contact, both are destroyedinstantly. Physicists call the process 'annihilation."

"Death is only a byproduct of terrorism."

"Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts."

"Understanding as had the ancients that angels and demons were identical- interchangeable archetypes- all a matter of polarity: the guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer."

"The media is the right arm of anarchy."

"I spend my life essentially alone at a computer. That doesn't change. I have the same challenges every day."

"He warned that any church that ignored reality would not survive to enjoy the divine."

"Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. ...And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."

"God is found in the collection of Many. . . rather than in the One."

"It seemed there was always a close correlation between true believers and high body counts."

"Misunderstanding a culture's symbols is a common root of predujice."

"God created light and dark, heaven and hell-science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created everything in the universe with an opposite."Including matter itself, antimatter."

"Where we come from... is not nearly as startling as where we are going."

"It is said that in death, all things become clear."

"The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book."

"The other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them."

"Suggesting a married Jesus is one thing, but questioning the Resurrection undermines the very heart of Christian belief."

"Outside the window, a bank of clouds appeared on the horizon, inching slowly across the sky, finally slipping across the Moon and blocking out its radiant light. As he clicked off his overhead light, he turned his eyes one last time to the heavens. Outside, in the newly fallen darkness, the world had been transformed. The sky had become a glistening tapestry of stars."

"Madness breeds madness."

"When you're a black woman, her mother said, ain't no hiding what you are. Day you try, is the day you die. Stand tall, smile bright, and let 'em wonder what secret's making you laugh."

"The laws of physics is the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece."

"Sooner or later we've all got to let go of our past."

"There's a lot of stress... but once you get in the car, all that goes out the window."

"You can't jump for the stars if your feet hurt. And when you get where you're going, you darn well better look great!"

"I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold."

"Well, you know, in any novel you would hope that the hero has someone to push back against, and villains - I find the most interesting villains those who do the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. Either one is interesting. I love the gray area between right and wrong."

"We were at sixty thousand feet. You're thirty percent lighter upthere."

"Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy."

"Isn't antimatter what fuels the U.S.S.Enterprise?"

"By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account."