Best Mount Dragon Quotes by Douglas Preston

"The human-wave approach just doesn’t work in genetic engineering."

"It’s much easier to tear something down than build it up."

"The average doctor, if he’s lucky, may save hundreds of lives. A medical researcher may save thousands. But you, me, GeneDyne—we’re going to save millions. Billions."

"It’s what you’ve been used to at GeneDyne Edison, really, just magnified tenfold."

"You name it, Carson. Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, Marburg virus, Hantavirus, Dengue, Ebola, anthrax."

"Let’s face it, what we’re talking about is a permanent alteration in the human genome. That could be very controversial."

"People forget that the swine flu epidemic of 1918 killed one person out of fifty worldwide. That was the worst pandemic in recorded history, worse than the Black Death."

"We’re overdue—we’re ripe—for another pandemic right now."

"This is going to be the greatest adventure of your lifetime. I think I can guarantee that."

"Without you we are nothing. Carbon we were and carbon we shall become."

"No problem is insoluble. That’s what you said about the blood, remember? And then you solved it. You did it, Frank, think about it!"

"The universe is strange and vast, and anything is possible."

"I'm not necessarily against genetic engineering. What I am against is germ-cell therapy."

"This is an attempt to alter what it is that makes us human."

"We are doing extraordinary work here, not because we're smarter, but because we have so much more money."

"The whole world depends on you not fucking up."

"If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out."

"I’m more sorry than I can say that your experiment failed."

"You could have joined the rush to free Brandon-Smith, but you didn’t. You stayed cool and used your head."

"If they test X-FLU-positive—?" someone began.

"Get some sleep, Guy. There’s nothing more you can do here."

"Sleep was impossible, and he allowed his feet to take him to one of the aboveground labs beyond the inner perimeter."

"It all boiled down to the same thing: repeat the damned experiment."

"He thought of spending two more months locked up in the Fever Tank."

"He worked in front of a large picture window that looked out over the desert."

"Look," she said, "I’m sorry about my comment in the Fever Tank."

"You say a lot of stupid things," de Vaca said, flaring up.

"We can at least maintain a professional relationship."

"That son of a bitch? He’d been coming on to me since day one."

"Which one of you ugly old cayuses wants to go for a ride?"

"He grimaced in the dark, overripe air of the stable."

"He knew no better tonic than a long ride on horseback."

"He collected Roscoe’s lead rope, patted him and apologized, then wiped the seat dry and remounted."

"It’s been nice chatting with you," Levine said. "Please shut the door on your way out."

"It’s the stress of the situation. Try to relax."

"This is not some academic tiff. We’re talking about the future of the human race."

"If you call a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit ‘pressure,’ then, hell, yes!"

"The man’s eyes had a reddish cast, like the inward flames of a secret obsession."

"After hearing decadent counterrevolutionary music, I’m sorry I fixed it," he said.

"The leaves hung limply on the great oaks and chestnut trees."

"Pathogens of unimaginable virulence are being created in labs today."

"I miss you so terribly. The people here are friendly, for the most part. But we are associates before we are friends here, all pushing toward one common goal."

"I can write no more today. The problem I’ve been given is demanding all my time and energy."

"This human piece, in essence, took over the functions of the bacterium and forced it to do one thing: produce human hemoglobin."

"And that, to me, is the magic—the irreducible truth of genetics, the promise that will never grow stale."

"The hemoglobin needs to be enclosed in something. Normally, this would be a red blood cell."

"We were left with a soup of crap: molecules of hemoglobin mixed with dead and dying bacteria; bits of DNA and RNA; chromosomal fragments; rogue bacteria."

"I hear him whispering in my ear: Just five more minutes. Just one more test series."

"We have mapped its entire genome. We know how to snip apart its DNA, tuck in a gene, and sew everything back together."

"But the rain did not come. Just as it does not come today."

"The thought of having such a substance pumped into something as inviolate as one’s own veins has to be disturbing to a layman."

"If you only knew how pouring out my soul to you on these pages has lifted a great weight from my shoulders."

"It is the same desire that led Einstein to suggest the terrible power of the atom in a letter to Roosevelt; it is the same desire that led Oppenheimer to build the bomb and test it not thirty miles from here; it is the same desire that led the Anasazi priests to meet in this stone chamber and exhort the Thunderbird to send the rain."

"It wasn’t for fame, which is a terrific nuisance."

"But—and this is what haunts me, what has driven me to commit this all to paper—the success of PurBlood does not alter the fact that I cheated."

"You will never know what being able to speak this secret has done for me."

"The requirements for membership were equally simple: genius."

"The road ran into a stand of spruce, then emerged at a high meadow covered with blueberry bushes."

"The cause of such terrible suffering and death, and look how beautiful it is."

"And that’s the primary reason I’ve asked you here. Would you care to know just what this terrible, inconceivably deadly, virus is? The one that Dr. Levine says may end the world?"
9179812

"You have three minutes to evacuate the area."

"No way," de Vaca gasped as she gulped in large lungfuls of air. "They’re going to be running like hell to the other side of the compound."

"Easy, boy," said de Vaca, catching the reins and stroking the animal’s neck.

"We’ve got a long way to go," he said as de Vaca pulled up alongside. "We’d better take it easy on these horses."

"There goes my pre-war Gibson flathead," Carson muttered.

"We’ll never outrun those bastards in this desert."

"Another might have felt terrible, even overwhelming anger at such a betrayal. But Scopes felt merely sorrow."

"There’s only one person I haven’t spoken to: Brent Scopes."

"It’s damn lucky, Carson thought, that horses have much better night vision than humans."

"Only fools and Hollywood actors galloped their horses."

"Perhaps he had been smart enough to steal or even disable his horse, Muerto, on the way out."

"Carson wondered if he should have told de Vaca the worst news of all."

"But we must save it for the horses. If you want, I’ll take your canteen when the time comes."

"At dawn the eagle of the sun rises on a needle of fire."

"I didn’t fail, cabrón. I ran out of money, remember?"

"You pinch the skin on the neck and see how fast the wrinkle springs back. A horse’s skin loses elasticity as he becomes thirsty."

"We used to catch snakes like this all the time on the ranch. You cut off their heads, gut ’em, and coil them in the fire. Taste like chicken."

"Even if it doesn’t bite him, I’m willing to bet it will make him go that much slower."

"The plan that took shape in his mind was very simple."

"You are a fool," the voice whispered. "You are a fool, a fool, a—"

"A man and a woman, dying of thirst, use their last water to wash a bandanna."

"Tell me, how?" he said aloud, spinning toward the shadow.

"And all this time, Nye has been searching for Mondragón’s lost gold. It never occurred to him—it never occurred to anybody—that Mondragón might have been carrying some other kind of wealth. Something practically worthless today."

"Perhaps," de Vaca replied. "But legends don’t die all that easily."

"You kept silent only because you hoped I’d sign the corn-patent renewal," Levine typed.

"What profit I made from it was minuscule measured against the productivity increase," Scopes replied.

"It was our discovery, yes. But it wasn’t my wish to turn that discovery into a tool for greed. I wanted to release it into the public domain."

"Game of come-catch-a-blackbird?" the boy asked, shoving a grubby handful of lava pebbles at him.

"I’m sorry it has to end like this, Charles," came the voice of Scopes.

"‘To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a wise man,’" he quoted.

"What the hell good was it against a man with an express rifle?"

"A virus known as X-FLU II has been released into the air supply. Both Dr. Levine and I have been infected. This virus is one-hundred-percent fatal."