Douglas Preston Quotes

United States, Journalist
May 31, 1956

Douglas Jerome Preston (born May 31, 1956) is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child (including the Agent Pendergast series and Gideon Crew series), he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen non-fiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

Also known as Author

My hobbies are mountain biking, horseback riding and packing, canoeing and kayaking, hiking, camping, cooking, and skiing.

Douglas Preston
- Mountain
- Cooking
- Skiing
Hubris and science are incompatible.

Douglas Preston
- Science

I'm pretty much a 9-to-5 kind of guy. I usually get to work about 8 in the morning, and I work until 4 or 5, and sometimes I work on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Pretty much I keep the same hours as an accountant or clerk or whatever.

Douglas Preston
- Work
- Guy
- Pretty
My first job was washing dishes in the basement of a nursing home for $2.10 an hour, and I learned as much about the value of hard work there as I ever did later.

Douglas Preston
- Work
- Home
- Job
I would have to say the novel 'War and Peace' influenced me more than any other book. This greatest of novels demonstrated to me the enormous power of literature and fired me up with a desire to become a writer, to participate in what I considered then to be the greatest of all endeavors.

Douglas Preston
- Up
- Book
- Power
I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.

Douglas Preston
- Up
- Small
There is nothing inherently wrong about science.

Douglas Preston
- Science
There are so many journalists out there, I hate to say it, who are lazy and don't do their research - and it shows.

Douglas Preston
- Hate
- Lazy

When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea.

Douglas Preston
- Up
- God
- Thinking