Top 515 Quotes & Sayings by Dean Koontz

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Dean Koontz.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Dean Koontz

Dean Ray Koontz is an American author. His novels are billed as suspense thrillers, but frequently incorporate elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Many of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, with fourteen hardcovers and sixteen paperbacks reaching the number-one position. Koontz wrote under a number of pen names earlier in his career, including "David Axton", "Deanna Dwyer", "K.R. Dwyer", "Leigh Nichols" and "Brian Coffey". He has published over 105 novels and a number of novellas and collections of short stories, and has sold over 450 million copies of his work.

The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.
If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.
Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine. — © Dean Koontz
Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.
If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored.
Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.
We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.
I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.
I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.
Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.
I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.
I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.
If someone wrote it and it had a peculiar twist, I've read it.
Because people see violence on the movie screen, they're not going to go out and hold up a liquor store and kill somebody. It really doesn't correlate. — © Dean Koontz
Because people see violence on the movie screen, they're not going to go out and hold up a liquor store and kill somebody. It really doesn't correlate.
Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror.
The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.
Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.
Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.
I think it's the people who have no doubt that every word they put down is gold that probably don't write very well.
I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.
A fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.
I think it's perfectly just to refuse service to anyone based on behavior, but not based on race or religion.
One of the things I like enormously about Bob Weinstein is that that he's the only studio head I have ever known who will change his mind and say he was wrong.
I have been reading Stephen King since CARRIE and hope to read him for many years to come.
I think the world is full of evil people. I think in some ways we're in more danger now than before.
I have avoided becoming stale by putting a little water on the plate, lying on the plate, and having myself refreshed in a toaster oven for 23 minutes once every month.
What we do as a society is seek simple answers.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
Never, never try to scope the market.
There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.
Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life.
Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.
A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
I don't find slashing and blood flying everywhere to be scary. I just find it repulsive.
My wife is my first audience. She's a tough lady, so I can't say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.
I believe that I was a dog in a past life. That's the only thing that would explain why I like to snack on Purina Dog Chow.
Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.
When tempest tossed, embrace chaos.
If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher. — © Dean Koontz
If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.
Your mind always does worse things than people can show in a movie.
Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.
Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.
If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.
When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.
I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.
I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence - I find that offensive. I think that's potentially damaging to society.
I've not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent.
Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.
I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life. — © Dean Koontz
I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.
In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.
Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.
In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings.
Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.
Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.
I try not to spend too much time on partisan politics. Life's too short for that. I don't really believe that there have been many human problems solved by politics.
Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.
Creating a family in this turbulent world is an act of faith, a wager that against all odds there will be a future, that love can last, that the heart can triumph against all adversities and even against the grinding wheel of time.
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.
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.
The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls
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