The Da Vinci Code Quotes

The 6 most famous lines from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”

  - The narrator, on Sauniere's final riddle. The epigraph-frame logic of the whole chase - why the Priory hides in cathedrals and why the reader keeps turning pages.

• “So dark the con of Man.”

  - Sophie Neveu, reading the anagram. The scrambled clue on the invisible ink: 'Madonna of the Rocks' - an anagram hiding a painting hiding a secret. The novel's puzzle-density in four words.

• “The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits.”

  - the cryptex riddle. The verse that sends them to Scotland - one of the poem-clues that turned a Rosslyn chapel into a queue.

• “History is always written by the winners.”

  - Robert Langdon. Langdon's seminar voice at full volume - the thesis of the book, and the reason historians spent 2004 writing furious rebuttals.

• “Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith - acceptance of what we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”

  - Leigh Teabing. The villain delivering the book's most-quoted theology - which is exactly the trap the novel sets for readers who trust eloquent experts.

• “What really matters is what you believe.”

  - Robert Langdon. The closing argument - the sentence that lets the book have its conspiracy and its piety too.

Why these lines survive

Dan Brown’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 6 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Da Vinci Code quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 9 hours and 48 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Da Vinci Code list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Dan Brown books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Dan Brown are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

Gone Girl quotes, The Shining quotes, Verity quotes, The Lovely Bones quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

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