"Do you believe in God, Mr. Langdon?"...A spiritual connundrum, Langdon thought. That's what my friends call me. Although he studied religion for years, Langdon was not a religious man. He respected the power of faith, the benevolence of churches, the strength religion gave so many people...and yet, for him, the intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to "believe" had always proved too big an obstacle for his academic mind. "I want to believe," he heard himself say. Vittoria's reply carried no judgement of challenge. "So why don't you?" He chuckled. "Well, it's not that easy. Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles-immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture...they all carry similar requirements-and similar penalties. They claim that if I don't live by a specific code that I will go to hell. I can't imagine a God who would rule that way."...."Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe in what man says about God. I asked if you believe in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories...legends and history of of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgement on literature. I am asking if you believe in God."

"Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing."..."So faith is random?" "Hardly. Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves."

- 'Angels & Demons' by Dan Brown

 "We were each other's trophies, and we spent our days on pedastals....Since those early weeks I've taken her off the shelf. She's returned the favor. We argue because I keep my room too warm, and because she sleeps with her window open; she chides me for getting seconds of dessert--because someday, she says, even men pay for their petty transgressions. Gil jokes that I've been domesticated, humoring me with the notion that I used to be a wild thing. The fact is, I was made for husbandry. I turn up my thermostat when I'm not cold, and eat dessert when I'm not hungry, because in the shadow of every admonishment from Katie is the hint that she won't tolerate these things in the future, because there will be a future. The fantasies I used to have, powered by the electricity of potential between strangers, are weaker things now. I like her best the way she is in this courtyard."

- 'The Rule of Four' by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason