One does not need to have cancer to analyze its symptoms.

Langdon whispered to Vittoria. 'Ever fire anything other than a tranquilizer gun?' 'Don't you trust me?' 'Trust you? I barely know you.' Vittoria frowned. 'And here I thought we were newly-weds.

Washington, D.C., has everything that Rome, Paris and London have in the way of great architecture - great power bases. Washington has obelisks and pyramids and underground tunnels and great art and a whole shadow world that we really don't see.

Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history?

Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world.

There's just no substitute for the truth.

Proof ... was a conclusion built on a pyramid of facts, a broad base of accepted information on which more specific assertions were made.