It was not the brutality of what occurred next that changed my mind and brought home to me the full meaning of fear. It was the brilliance of it.

I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.

Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.

Festina Lente (Hurry in slowly)

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.