Quotes from Dean Koontz

Nothing in this world, not even the most mundane moments of our lives, is without meaning, nor is any of it lost forever.

Why would someone cut out his heart? Michael shrugged. Souvenir. Sexual gratification. Dinner.

Instinct is an animal faculty, independent of instruction and reasoning, but far inferior to intuition, which is a grace unique to humanity.

To say that I am living on borrowed time would be not merely a cliché but also an understatement. My entire life has been a heavily mortgaged enterprise. But so is yours. Eventual foreclosure awaits all of us. More likely than not, I'll receive my notice before you do, though yours, too, is in the mail. Nevertheless, until the postman comes, be happy. There is no other rational response but happiness. Despair is a foolish squandering of precious time.

I often resorted: buckets, brooms, garden rakes, Granny Smith apples, cats that when thrown will reliably take out their fury not on the thrower but instead on the person at whom they're thrown. I didn't like throwing cats or animals of any kind, as far as that goes, but every once in a while, in a life-and-death situation, there was nothing to be done but grab a cat and throw it, or an angry ferret.

Can I assume you're sober? Nope, had two diet root beers.

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.

most people care more about their appearance than they do about the condition of their souls.

With human beings, a natural death was a death with dignity. But animals were innocents, and as their stewards, people owed them mercy.

Mr. Thomas, did you know that in an experiment with a human observer, subatomic particles behave differently from the way they behave when the experiment is observed while in progress and the results are examined, instead, only after the fact? Sure. Everybody knows that. He raised one bushy eyebrow. Everybody, you say. Well then you realize what this signifies. I said, At least on an subatomic level, human will can in part shape reality.

Irrational fear feeds on itself and grows. You must deny it.

One of the good things about being twelve or younger is that you tend to believe that you'll live forever.

I said what might have been a bad word meaning excrement, but I hope that I used a polite synonym.

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.

I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.

All I asked was that I be spared surprises, although, in this world of six billion souls, all acting with free will and too many with audacity, surprises are inevitable, too few of them are the kind that make you smile and that lift your heart.

watching the sea as it carried to shore millions of fragments of the sun and cast them, cooled and foaming, on the sand.

consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.

He had tried to shed his pain, to rise from the ashes like a drab phoenix with no hope except the cold peace of indifference. Now that events forced him to open himself to the world again, he was swamped by emotion as a novice surfer was overwhelmed by each cresting wave.

People go through life failing to see all sorts of amazing things because they aren't expecting to see them.

Desperation is energized despair, and despair is the abandonment of hope.

Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people as it was for a writer?

If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not, in fact, his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate and inoculates against foolishness. ~Little Ozzie

With time, however, life had become too real