Top 515 Quotes & Sayings by Dean Koontz - Page 7

Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy - well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh. -Odd Thomas -Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 30 chapter 4

In a world that daily disconnects further from truth, more and more people accept the virtual in place of the real, and all things virtual are also malleable.

If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends.

Not an insult sweetie. That was a thirteen word kiss.

I'm either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they're afraid of mutants [...] Fear implies respect.

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.

When new hopes fail, old hopes return in the endless cycle of desperation.

Perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.

I was looking forward to having a halo. It would make such a convenient reading lamp.

If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.

Are you prepared for the first wound?

...I felt fear enter the halls of my mind, but I didn't give it the keys to every room.

It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.

Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation. Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again. Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around. Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn.

mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God.

Narcissists are everywhere in this ripe age of self-love, which amazes me because so much in life would seem to foster humility. Each of us is a potential source of foolishness, each of us must endure the consequences of the foolishness of others, and in addition to all of that, Nature frequently works to impress upon us our absurdity and thereby remind us that we are not the masters of the universe that we like to suppose we are. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 62 chapter 8

These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings - and then ended up with none that were genuine.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.

There is nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either.

Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.

Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night.

Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.

The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

As an attorney, 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 nearly always short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.

Have fun, entertain yourself with your work, make yourself laugh and cry with your own stories, make yourself shiver in suspense along with your characters. If you can do that, then you will most likely find a large audience; but even if a large audience is never found, you'll have a happy life.

No degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.

In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.

Experts must read the patterns and judge their usefulness as evidence. Under any of numerous pressures, an expert may wish to misread a pattern or even to alter it. Americans had a touching trust in "experts".

The only thing we can't buy more of is time." she said. "And dodo birds. We can't buy any more of them. they're extinct. And dinosaurs.

In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to.

People couldn't bear to go on living if they faced every cold truth about themselves.

When things are baffling they usually don't unbaffle themselves.There's just, you know, a certain amount of baffling stuff that always, like, really baffles you, and I've found that it's best to accept bafflement whenever it comes along, and then move on.

... one of those librarians who rules the stacks with an intimidating scowl, whispers quiet sharply enough to lacerate the tender inner tissues of the ear, and will pursue an overdue-book fine with the ferocity of a rabid ferret.

Tommy told Sal about the strange white-cloth figure with black stitches that he had found on the front porch. "Sounds like Pillsbury Doughboy gone punk," Sal said.

Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

The wives of Spartans are the secret pillars of the world."--Odd Thomas

Maybe I'm needy, neurotic, paranoid. Under the circumstances, of course, if I weren't needy, neurotic, and paranoid, I'd obviously be psychotic.

Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.

Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image

At the core of every ordered system, whether a family or a factory, is chaos. But in the whirl of every chaos lies a strange order, waiting to be found.

Is rule of thumb in writing game: if story requires many long descriptions of smells so vile that will give reader nausea, is not likely to find publisher.

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

Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.

I would not cry. I do not cry. How bitter do you risk becoming by swallowing too many tears?

The best part of a Mr. Goodbar is not the wrapper, is it? No, and the best part of a Coke is not the can. On those nights when you lie awake, either man or boy, wondering about yourself, peeling away one layer of oddness after another, you should remember and always be grateful that the woefully imperfect person that you are, with all your contradictions and unworthy desires, is not the best of you, any more than the wrapper is the best part of a Mr. Goodbar. -Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koonts pgs. 354-355 chapter 53

Faced with the challenge of an endless universe, Man will be forced to mature further, just as the Neanderthal-faced with an entire planet-had no choice but to grow away from the tradition of savagery.

But the more people we love and the more deeply we love them, the more vulnerable we are to loss and grief and loneliness.

Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go.

There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.

Grapes are juicy. Strawberries. Oranges. Good pork chops are succulent," said Dusty. "But the word isn't accurately descriptive of a person." Smiling with delight, Ahriman said, "Oh, really, not accurately descriptive? Be careful housepainter. Your genes are showing. What if I were a cannibal?

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

Where there's cake, there's hope. And there's always cake.

It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.

the worst happens when you least expect it

Duty doesn't need to call; it only needs to whisper. And if you heed the call, no matter what happens, you have no need for regret." Odd Thomas

Like children, dogs want discipline and are most secure when they have rules to live by. The happiest dogs are those with gentle masters who quietly but firmly demand respect.

A great deal of phenomenal experience has fostered in me a flexibility of the mind and imagination that some might call madness

Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed.

You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.