Dean Koontz Quotes - Page 3

...he was part of a family whether he wanted to be or not, the family of humanity, more often than not a frustrating and contentious clan, flawed and often deeply confused, but also periodically noble and admirable, with a common destiny that every member shared.

What we fear too much we often bring to pass.

...what makes humanity beautiful is our free will, our individuality, our endless striving in spite of our imperfection.BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOONChapter 27 Page 214

...on a subconscious level we're aware that time isn't enduring, that it is not a required condition of our existence, that there comes a point when we will have no need of it.

My life has a mysterious purpose that I don't understand, and day by day, conflict by conflict, I learn by going where I have to go.

The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded.

Art is the only answer to chaos and the void.

Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.

That stormy day in the desert, however, much changed for me. We must have our goals, our dreams and we must strive for them. We are not gods, however; we do not have the power to shape every aspect of the future. And the road the world makes for us is one that teaches humility if we are willing to learn.

...and where the Ferris wheel carried its passengers high and brought them low and raised them high and brought them low again, as if it were not merely a carnival ride but also a metaphor for the basic pattern of human experience.

Not immediately able to proceed, I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace.

It's funny, ma'am, how sometimes you're so sarcastic but it doesn't sting.""Because of my dimples. Dimples are a get-out-of-jail-free card

As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work - and it's author - in bondage.

the worst happens when you least expect it

The less I have, the less I can lose.

...up to no good—and pleased about it.

She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Your past is my Future.

What doesn't quicken dies. That's an indisputable truth of life.

The sky is deep, the sky is dark. The light of the stars is o damn stark/When I look up, I fill with fear, if all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead stars and empty space...Well, I see no reason to persevere, no reason to laugh or shed a tear, no reason to sleep and none to wake/ No promises to keep and none to make. And so at night I still raise my eyes tos tudy the clear but mysterious skies that arch avove us, cold as stone. Are you there God? Are we alone?

Life without meaningcannot be borne.We find a missionto which we're sworn--or answer the callof Death's dark horn.Without a gleaningof purpose in life,we have no vision,we live in strife,--or let blood fallon a suicide knife.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.

...Here lie your hopes and dreams, shattered and swept aside...

Dogs, lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and the mistakes we make because of those illusions.

How obvious can it be? ... The purpose of makeup is to defy the degradations of time, and time is just a synonym for death.

You be careful, Wizard. Interestingly eccentric friends aren't easy to find.

I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather...the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it-very loose, the line of the law-so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are always-short of the blantant theft or cold-blooded murder-safely on the right side.

If patterns exist in our seemingly patternless lives — and they do — then the law of harmony insists that the most harmonious of all patterns, circles within circles, will most often assert itself.

May I tell you a wonderful truth about your dog? ... In our religion, we believe in reincarnation. We live many times, you see, always seeking to be wiser and more virtuous. If we eventually lead a blameless life, a perfect life, we leave this world and need not endure it again. Between our human lives, we may be reincarnated as other creatures. Sometimes, when someone has led a nearly perfect life but is not yet worthy of nirvana, that person is reincarnated as a very beautiful dog. When the life as the dog comes to an end, the person is reincarnated one last time as a human being, and lives a perfect life. Your dog is a person who has almost arrived at complete enlightenment and will in the next life be perfect and blameless, a very great person. You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul.

I'd had much practice turning my mind away from certain memories of my childhood. I could quickly dial her remembered voice from a whisper to a silence.

Out of sight above the house, the mirror moon reflected the sun of a day not yet dawned, shining the pale light of tomorrow on the yard and on the paper birches.

She blinked, sat up, and saw Chris in the bathroom doorway. He'd just gotten out the shower. His hair was damp, and he was dressed only in his briefs. The sight of his thin, boyish body - all ribs and elbows and knees - pulled at her heart, for he looked so innocent and vulnerable. He was so small adn fragile that she wondered how she could ever protect him, and renewed fear rose in her.

Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie.

Initially the snow had been beautiful, but not so much now. The softness and sparkle still charmed, but the storm occluded the sky, denying us the stars. At the moment, I needed to see a firmament of stars, needed to gaze past the moon and through the constellations, needed to see what can't be seen--infinity.

Years later, after other experiences with dogs, I wondered if their species were shaped and charmed to serve as four-legged guides able to assist in leading humanity back to our first—and lost—home. By the example of their joy and humility, by wanting nothing more than food and play and love, by the deep satisfaction that they take from those humble things, they belie all creeds of power and fame. Although they have the teeth to tear, it is by swish of tail and yearning eyes that they most easily get what they want.

On the third, directly before me, were embedded more polished letters: PER OMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.For ever and ever. In the red light, the brushed steel glowed softly, like embers. The polish letters blazed.Without a hiss, For ever and ever slid aside, as though inviting me to eternity.

The line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern. The man who stands before a crowd and proclaims his intention to save the seas is convinced that he is superior to a man who merely picks up his own and other people’s litter on the beach, when in fact the latter is in some small way sure to make the world a better place, while the former is likely to be a monster of vanity whose crusade will lead to unintended destruction.

From their perspective, however, torture might make a sort of cockeyed sense if it was ritualistic, part of a ceremony that this fraternity of the demented required of themselves when they murdered one of their own.

So many things in my continuing education are learned by going where I have to go and doing what I have to do. Therefore, my only answer is: "I guess I'll find out.

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.

Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it.

Well, Mr Thomas, while I'm in favour of education, I couldn't in good conscience recommend a university career in anything but the hard sciences. As a working environment, the rest of academia is a sewer of irrationality, hate mongering, envy, and self-interest. I'm getting out the moment I earn my twenty-five-year pension package, and then I'm going to write novels...

When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, "I don't hate you."She called me an effing liar and said, "Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate.""I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost.

Funny how people that don't believe in nothin' are so quick to believe every crazy story about people like us.

When I was a child, I first thought that these shades might be malevolent spirits who fostered evil in those people around whom they swarmed. I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.

What was destiny? What was the power that shaped the patterns and attempted to enforce them? God? Should she be raging at God - or begging Him to let her son live and to spare her from the life of a cripple? Or was the power behind destiny merely a natural mechanism, a force no different in origin from gravity or magnetism?

We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.

Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don't expect too much, enjoy what you have.

...your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will...

When I was no longer of the world, I would miss its extravagant beauty. I would miss the complex and charming layers of subterfuge by which the truth of the world's mysteries were withheld from us even as we were tantalized and enchanted by them. I would miss the kindness of good people who were compassionate when so many were pitiless, who made their way through so much corruption without being corrupted themselves, who eschewed envy in a world of envy, who eschewed greed in a world of greed, who valued truth and could not be drowned in a sea of lies, for they shone and, by the light they cast, they warmed me all my life.

When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.

To spare Cloyce's victims further indignities to their memory, I must be a scourge. To prevent others from perhaps being infected by Cloyce's depravity by watching him at work, I must be a scourge. To prevent time management technology from falling into the hands of authorities who, if not already corrupt, would be corrupted by it, I must be a scourge.Scourges aren't heroes.I had never imagined myself to be a hero, but never had I imagined I would be this.Scourges transgress against social and sacred order.A scourge went into darker territory than that. A scourge was not compelled to kill by mental imbalance or emotional confusion or selfish desire. A scourge made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in numbers that exceeded what was absolutely necessary to ensure self-preservation and the defense of the innocent. Even if he killed for the right reason, he was in rebellion against social order and commanding authority.Who scourges will be scourged. In fulfilling this dark role in Roseland, I would bring about my own death.Yet I knew I would not retreat from my decision.

He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.

Fate isn't a straight road," I said, becoming the oracle that earlier in the day I had declined to be for her. "There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

I'm no more a wonder than anyone. And that's what makes the world magical. Every baby's a seed of wonder - that gets watered or it doesn't.

Besides, I can't get to where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I've got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can - that's how I buy the ticket to where I want to be.

Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much that lies before us. We want a simple world, but we live in a magnificently complex one, and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world through filters that make it less daunting.