Quotes from Dean Koontz

the optimist, unlike the pessimist, believes that life has meaning, that there is something to learn from every adversity, and even that the absurdity of such an excess of misfortune will likely seem at least somewhat amusing after enough time has passed.

Every failure hollows out my heart a little further, and no success is able to refill any of that emptiness.

You don't find life by fleeing from it.

If she could seldom bring herself to touch me and even more seldom look at me directly, she nonetheless made a place for me in her life.

Some felt that perhaps in his past lay a tragedy with which he had never been able to make his peace, that the only companion with which he felt comfortable was sorrow.

What's gotten into you today? All evening

Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

After the church ceased to exist, an outfit calling itself the First Amendment Protection Society, Inc.—the largest operator of adult bookstores, topless bars, Internet porn sites, and karaoke cocktail lounges in the United States—intimidated

Mother seemed to wish that she'd never had a childhood, perhaps because all delight was fleeting and because the promise of one day was not fulfilled even just until the next.

Malevolence and paranoia cohabit in a twisted mind. Bad men trust no one because they know the treachery of which they themselves are capable.

I half expected cathedral bells to ring out across the city in memoriam, a carillon of joyous bells that said Someone is free at last, and simultaneously a monody of heavy bells, iron bells, as solemn as those rung for heroes and for statesmen, bells that said He is gone who was much loved. But the night was empty of all bells. There were no bells for such as us, no funerals, no crowd of mourners around our graves.

If I ever sold my soul, it'd be for you.

To those who lack a conscience, there is no such thing as remorse.

Who in all the world ever stands up to really outrageous evil? Not many. Most people satisfy themselves by strongly opposing little evils, like hurtful words and unpopular ideas and gluttony, where the risk of angering violent people is low.

I don't allow flying nuns in my convent," she said. "They tend to be frivolous, and during night flight, they're prone to crashing through windows.

We are what we are, he thought, and maybe the only time we can change what we are is when life throws us such a surprise that it's like hitting a plate-glass window with a baseball bat, shattering the grip of the past.

Nolly Wolfstan, private detective, had the teeth of a god and a face so unfortunate that it argued convincingly against the existence of a benign deity.

eerie in a way it is nowhere else in the world, the flats receding and the low hills rising as if they are just fields of mist and walls of fog, illusions of shapes and dimensions, reflections of reflections, and those reflections only reflections of a dream.

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel / The sharp compassion of the healer's art.

Hands of Mercy and tanks of hell.

Flying across the faces of the buildings, the shadows resemble dragons, as if Texas has gone Tolkien.

I know what it's like to desperately need help, and what I think is it would feel really good to be on the other side, to be able to give help to people who need it, desperately or otherwise.

The only monsters in this world are those who pass for human, who cast shadows and are reflected in mirrors, who smile and speak of compassion and shed convincing tears.

Darkness doesn't fall at a predictable schedule. Darkness can overwhelm you any time of the day, as you know well.