"Not for the first time Laing reflected that he and his neighbours were most eager for trouble as the most effective means of enlarging their sex lives."

"'A low crime-rate, doctor', she told him amiably, 'is clearly a sign of social deprivation.'"

"In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement."

"'They're all making their own films down there,' Anne told him, clearly fascinated by her heady experience of the lower orders at work and play. 'Every time someone gets beaten up about ten cameras are shooting away.'"

"In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape."

"Above all, he looked down on them for their good taste."

"Royal liked ... that [the birds] had all flown here from the same archaic landscape, responding to the same image of the sacred violence to come."

"At times Royal suspected that his neighbours unconsciously hoped that everything would decline even further."

"... [I]n Anne's world it was not only necessary for work to be done, but be seen to be done."

"Without realizing it, [the architect] had given these people a means of escaping into a new life, and a pattern of social organization that would become the paradigm of all future high-rise blocks."

"Their real opponent was not the hierarchy of residents in the heights far above them, but the image of the building in their own minds, the multiplying layers of concrete that anchored them to the floor."

"... their territorial instinct, in its psychological and social senses, had weakened to the point where it was ripe for exploitation."

"Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here, he reflected. Vandalism had plagued these slab and tower blocks since their inception. Every torn-out piece of telephone equipment, every handle wrenched off a fire-safety door, every kicked-in electricity meter represented a stand against decerebration."

"He felt excited in a confused way."

"For some time now he had known he was developing a powerful phobia about the high-rise. He was constantly aware of the immense weight of concrete stacked above him, and the sense that his body was the focus of the lines of power running for the building, almost as if [the architect] had deliberately designed his body be held within their grip. At night as he lay beside his sleeping wife, he would often wake from an uneasy sleep into the suffocating bedroom, conscious of each of the 999 other apartments pressing on the walls and ceiling, forcing the air from his chest."

"'You think that we're secretly enjoying all this?Don't you? I'd guess so, doctor. Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator. For the first time since we were three years old what we do makes absolutely no difference.'"

"...[T]he elevators pumping up and down in their long shafts resembled pistons in the chamber of a heart. The residents moving along the corridors were the cells in a network of arteries; the lights in their apartments the neurones of a brain."

"But even before they sat down together on her bed Laing knew that, almost as an illustration of the paradoxical logic of the high-rise, their relationship would end rather than begin with this first sexual act."

"The more arid and effectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered. By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas that the most important and most interesting aspect of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise, like passengers on board an automatically piloted airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly 'free' psychopathology."

"Although many people erroneously interpreted apocalypse as a cataclysmic end of the world, the word literally signified an “unveiling,” predicted by the ancients to be that of great wisdom. The coming age of enlightenment. Even so, Langdon could not imagine such a vast change being ushered in by . . . a word."

"Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light."

"Throughout history, the circumpunct has been all things to all people — it is the sun god Ra, alchemical gold, the all-seeing eye, the singularity point before the Big Bang..."

"Wealth is commonplace, but wisdom is rare."

"Don't tell me, bookish bachelor seeking single Noetic Scientist?"

"America’s intended destiny has been lost to history. The forefathers who founded this capital city first named her “Rome.” They had named her river the Tiber and erected a classical capital of pantheons and temples, all adorned with images of history’s great gods and goddesses — Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Helios, Vulcan, Jupiter. In her center, as in many of the great classical cities, the founders had erected an enduring tribute to the ancients — the Egyptian obelisk. This obelisk, larger even than Cairo’s or Alexandria’s, rose 555 feet into the sky, more than thirty stories, proclaiming thanks and honor to the demigod forefather for whom this capital city took its newer name. Washington."

"Knowledge is a tool, and like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user."

"Our connection was fine professor, and I have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit"

"Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of 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."

"Sorry, but the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means "hidden" or "obscured." In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or "occult," and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything "occult" as evil, and the prejudice survived."

"He gazed up through the rain-speckled glass ceiling at the mountainous form of the illuminated Capitol Dome overhead. It was an astonishing building. High atop her roof, almost three hundred feet in the air, the Statue of Freedom peered out into the misty darkness like a ghostly sentinel. Langdon always found it ironic that the workers who hoisted each piece of the nineteen-and-a-half-foot bronze statue to her perch were slaves — a Capitol secret that seldom made the syllabi of high school history classes."

"The secret is how to die. Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die."

"In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase "It’s buried out there somewhere." All organizations in this novel exist, including the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMSC, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real."

"Now the place looked like a war zone. The sink was overflowing with soiled pots. Half a dozen empty cans lay in and around the waste basket, dribbling out remnants of tomato sauce and olive oil."

"What else goes into the ragu, Nonna? If there was any response from the choir invisible, D'Agosta couldn't hear it."

"But no, it wasn't possible. He knew in his heart that Pendergast was dead."

"January 28th? My God, that's just one week away."

"If I had died, I would had ruined everything for Diogenes."

"These deaths, and the manner in which they were staged, were Diogenes's way of attracting my attention. Perhaps now, Vincent, you can understand why Diogenes needs me alive."

"Normally I despise luck, but at the moment I find myself in singular need of it."

"When I look at you, I see a bag filled with blood, bones, viscera, and meat, held in by the most fragile and vulnerable covering, so easily punctured, so facilely ripped or torn. I have to admit, I was looking forward to it."

"Graduate students were so low on the museum's totem pole that they were simply invisible."

"He had entered the house, no doubt immobilized Decker with some kind of drug, then waited for Pendergast to arrive before killing him. Chances were that Diogenes had deliberately tripped the burglar alarm while leaving the house."

"He was ex-military and had always endowed his movements with economy and precision, yet it was mot preciseness that kept him so erect in the chair. A heavy steel bayonet had been driven into his mouth, angling down through his neck and pinning him to the headrest. The point of the old bayonet pierced all the way through the chair back, sticking out the back side, its rough edge heavy with blood. Drops fell from the tip onto the sodden carpet."

"She was sitting in a wheelchair whose every surface was encased in thick black rubber. A small needlepoint pillow sat in her lap, on which rested her two withered hands. Ostrom himself pushed the wheelchair, and behind him came two orderlies wearing padded protective garments. She was wearing a long, old-fashioned dress of black taffeta. She looked tiny, with sticklike arms and a narrow frame, her face obscured by a mourning veil. It seemed impossible to D'Agosta that this frail-looking creature had recently slashed two orderlies."

"The chief of the Great Kiva Society didn't own the masks to begin with. They weren't his. They belonged to the entire tribe."

"The professor took a small, lurching step forward, bumping into the podium. And now his other hand flew to his face, feeling it all over, only harder now, pushing, stretching the skin, pulling down the lower lip, giving himself a few light slaps."

"I do believe it's time for that mint julep, Ambergris. John! Three mint juleps, well chilled, if you please. Use the icehouse ice, it's much sweeter."

"The Pendergast bloodline has been tainted for centuries. There but for the grace of God go you and I, Ambergris."

"Aloysius comes to visit me here every now and then. When he needs advice. He's such a good boy. Attentive to his elders. Not like the other one."

"Dear brother. So good of you to come all this way to visit me. You've kept away so very long, you bad creature. Not that I blame you, of course, it's almost more than I can bear, living in the north with all these barbarous Yankees."