Top 515 Quotes & Sayings by Dean Koontz - Page 3

Reality isn't what it used to be.

Without trust, there can be no tranquil resting of the mind.

Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at many moment, cry, "Let's go!" and lead them on a great adventure.

It's only life. We all get through it.

If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that’s more than just entertainment-w hich is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

Being polite is not only the right way to respond to people but also the easiest. Life is so filled with unavoidable conflict that I see no reason to promote more confrontations.

Y'all take care of yourself now... strange and interesting friends are hard to find.

As long as I have laughter, I am not without hope

Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.

A good dog is one of the best things of all to be.

All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined-those dead, those living, those generations yet to come-that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.

Fire, ice, asteroids and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.

But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.

There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.

When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.

One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us

She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.

When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.

Envy, envy eats them alive. If you had money, they’d envy you that. But since you don’t, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated.

Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past.

One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint – on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart.

Intuition is seeing with the soul.

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.

The most identifying trait of humanity is our abilty to be inhumane to one another.

Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it's name.

Maybe when all was said and done, the imagination was the most powerful of all weapons. It was the imagination of the human race that had allowed it to dream of a life beyond cold caves and of a possible future in the stars.

I admit to having an imagination feverish enough to melt good judgment.

There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.

The brain acknowledged the approach of death while the heart stubbornly insisted upon immortality.

In each little life, we can see great truth and beauty, and in each little life we glimpse the way of all things in the universe. If we alow ourselves to be enchanted by the beauty of the ordinary, we begin to see that all things extraordinary.

In this world only the paranoid survive.

Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.

Lies hurt people; imagination makes life more fun.

...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.

Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always ready in the soul

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace

I don't mean to imply that I'm afraid of Death. I'm just not ready to go out on a date with him.

He said, if you allow yourself to be enchanted by the beauty to be seen in even ordinary things, then all things proved to be extraordinary.

I believe in the possibility of miracles but, more to the point, I believe in our need for them.

Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.

Life had not taught me to distrust ministers, but it had taught me to trust no one more than dogs.

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows.

The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk.

But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duties good friends and families performed for one another! They tended the flame of memory, so no one’s death meant an immediate vanishment from the world; in some sense the deceased would live on after their passing, at least as long as those who loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weapon against the chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some continuity from generation to generation, an order of endorsement and meaning.

In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not drifting but rising, rising toward something right and of significance.

The geometry of judgment is a circle. Hate is a snake that turns to consume itself from the tail, a circle that diminishes to a point, then to nothing. Pride is such a snake, and envy, and greed. Love, however, is a hoop, a wheel, that rolls on forever. We are rescued by those whom we have rescued. The saved become the saviors of their saviors.

Living in the modern age, death for virtue is the wage. So it seems in darker hours. Evil wins, kindness cowers. Ruled by violence and vice we all stand upon thin ice. Are we brave or are we mice, here upon such thin, thin ice? Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another’s salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.

I am no theologian. I would not be surprised, however, if Heaven proved to be a cozy kitchen, where delicious treats appeared in the oven and in the refrigerator whenever you wanted them, and where the cupboards were full of good books.

Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.

Cowards shrink from toil and peril, Vulgar souls attempt and fail; Men of mettle, nothing daunted, Persevere till they prevail.

Modesty is related to diffidence, diffidence is related to shyness, Shyness is a synonym for timidity, timidity is a characteristic of the meek, the meek do not inherit the Earth, they serve those who are self confident and self assertive.

In the wind, the trees, like agitated lions preparing to roar, shook their great green manes.

You have to stop worrying about looking foolish, 'cause fear of being humiliated really limits you.

Grief is a healthy emotion, and it's healthy to embrace it. By accepting loss, we clarify our values and the meaning of our lives.

Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.