“Giordino...simply sighed in resignation. "Who else," he asked no one in particular, "but Dirk Pitt could tramp off into a blizzard on an uninhabited backwater island in the Antarctic and discover a beautiful girl?”

“To those of you who seek lost objects of history, I wish you the best of luck. They're out there, and they're whispering.”

“I must say one thing about southern down-home brewed coffee with chicory. If you have worms, you'll never have them again.”

“While like most men, Sam prided himself on being equipped with a supernatural internal compass that kept him from ever being lost, he'd also learned to concede those rare times when that compass seemed to be temporary disrepair.”

“Hitting the first molecules of the upper atmosphere created friction that merely warmed the rod. The lower it fell, the more the heat built, until the entire length of the rod glowed red then yellow, and, finally, a brilliant white.”

“Though neither of them had ever called their meeting a case of love at first sight, they'd both agreed it had certainly been a case of "pretty damned sure at first hour.”

“Devotees who say that À la recherche du temps perdu reminds them of a cathedral should be asked which cathedral they mean. It reminds me of a sandcastle that the tide reached before its obsessed constructor could finish it; but he knew that would happen, or else why build it on a beach?”