I've been through a lot. I've thought a lot about life, and I've spent a lot of time studying history and science.

I love to learn, and at some level, there's something to learn from my books. And I love art and philosophy, so there's something philosophical about my fiction.

I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.

I read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.

I think one reason my books have found mainstream success is that they're written from a skeptical point of view.

For me, a good thriller must teach me something about the real world. Thrillers like 'Coma,' 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Firm' all captivated me by providing glimpses into realms about which I knew very little - medical science, submarine technology and the law.

If you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as immutable historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell.

I'm somebody who likes codes and ciphers and chases and artwork and architecture, and all the things you find in a Robert Langdon thriller.

I have great admiration for the fact-checking team. Considering it takes me years to gather all the facts in my books, it's a daunting task for the fact-checkers to review all of that material in a matter of weeks.

Technology is changing the way we interact as humans.

I grew up in a very religious household. My mom was a church organist. I was a religious kid.

Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.

We did not have a television while I was growing up, and so I read voraciously. My earliest memory of being utterly transfixed by a book was Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time.'

It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

I've always been captivated by the Voynich Manuscript - the mysterious, 15th-century encrypted codex that still baffles cryptologists, linguists, and historians.

It's not about what you tell the reader, it's about what you conceal.

Our need for that exterior god that sits up there and judges us... will diminish and eventually disappear.

I feel like if I'm going to take time reading, I better be learning.

I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing.

I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold.

I'm not a car person. Three years after 'The Da Vinci Code' came out, I still had my old, rusted Volvo. And people are like, 'Why don't you have a Maserati?' It never occurred to me. It wasn't a priority for me. I just didn't care.

I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping.

It's probably an intellectual weakness, but I look at the stars, and I say, 'There's something bigger than us out there.'

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a gospel, loosely, and it's important that we all realize that.

When I was a kid, the miracles of my life were the Resurrection, a candlelight service on New Year's Eve, the Virgin Birth, and the Three Wise Men.

I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

I think I was a shy kid. I grew up without television. I had a dog, and we lived up in the White Mountains in the summer, and I had no friends up there. And I would just go play hide-and-seek with my dog and probably had some imaginary friends.

Art historians agree that Da Vinci's paintings contain hidden levels of meaning that go well beneath the surface of the paint. Many scholars believe his work intentionally provides clues to a powerful secret... a secret that remains protected to this day by a clandestine brotherhood of which Da Vinci was a member.

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.