Quotes from Dean Koontz

Life is a gift that must be given back and joy should arise from its possession. It's too damn short and that's a fact. Hard to accept this earthly procession to final darkness is a journey done, circle completed, work of art sublime, a sweet melodic rhyme. A battle won.

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

Everyone talks about justice, but there can be no justice where there is no truth, and these are times when truth is seldom recognized and often despised.

And the funny thing was if you made the best of it, if you smiled through every storm, the bad things were never as terrible as you expected them to be, and the good things were better than anything you could have wished for yourself.

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

We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.

Even in the darkest moments, light exists if you have the faith to see it. Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always in the soul. In misfortune lies the seed of future triumph.

That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.

How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.

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

What has been is no more. Change has come.

He once told me that an August evening was as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart, a comparison that left me blinking two days later.

the worst happens when you least expect it

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

Home was not a perfect place. But it was the only home they had and they could hope to make it better.

Be happy. Persevere.

I survive by finding the sweet spot between reason and unreason, between the rational and irrational.

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.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic....

In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar. Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can. ~Odd Thomas

In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.

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.

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

Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.