Despite Langdon’s six-foot frame and athletic build, Anderson saw none of the cold, hardened edge he expected from a man famous for surviving an explosion at the Vatican and a manhunt in Paris. This guy eluded the French police…in loafers? He looked more like someone Anderson would expect to find hearthside in some Ivy League library reading Dostoyevsky.

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

FACT: The Priory of Sion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Outside, in the newly fallen darkness, the world had been transformed. The sky had become a glistening tapestry of stars.

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.

Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.

One final bit of advice. The next time a senior administrator of the CIA tells you she has a national-security crisis Leave the bullshit in Cambridge.