Quotes from Dean Koontz

Einstein vigorously wagged his tail. Thoughtfully, Nora said, "Escaped . . ." Travis knew what she must be thinking. To Einstein, he said, "They'll be looking for you, won't they?" The dog whined and wagged his tail—which Travis interpreted as a "yes" with a special edge of anxiety.

tomorrow is a slave to yesterday.

But even if it did, bad things happen to all of us, and that doesn't mean we can hurt others just because we ourselves have been hurt. Are you with me so far?

I've been badly scared myself, badly, for quite a few years now. You learn to live with it.

We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.

This fair world, compounded of uncountable beauties and enchantments and graces, inspired in me only one abiding fear, which was that I might live in it too long.

But this animal's unadulterated joy in being alive was like a spotlight that pierced Travis's inner gloom and reminded him that life had a brighter side from which he had long ago turned away.

Sudden falls can come to societies that know too little history or that have furnished their minds with easy one-note propaganda in place of the true complexity and terrible beauty of the storied past.

Laughter is a balm for the afflicted, the best defense against despair, the only medicine for melancholy. -Groucho Marx

The Christmas tree twinkles, and miniature angel dogs hover among the branches

Except for the lack of enormous insects, suffocating humidity, malaria victims groaning in death throes, poisonous vipers as thick as mosquitoes, and rabid jungle cats madly devouring their own feet, you would have sworn you were in the Amazon rainforest.

She was my sister, beloved, who had stayed in my room around the clock when I'd been eight and suffered with a case of the flu that nearly killed me. She was my sister, whose clarinet playing inspired me to find the music in me, to settle on the saxophone, which had fast become the key to my identity. I loved her as I loved no one else, as no others had allowed me to love them, and if I were to kill her under the influence of some malign spirit, I might as well then kill myself.

The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert. But Henry was himself and no one else, and judging by

There's something mystical about perfect hash browns, something that stirs the soul

Between a man and woman in love, no lie is small or harmless.

In certain fiction, she perceives truths that she rarely finds in nonfiction; therefore, in her quest to better understand the world and the meaning of her life, she reads those novels that suggest a world of wonders, dark and light, forever unfolding for eyes willing to see.

far back in the forest. Just when the pavement began to rise again, the headlights caught a sign on the left that announced FIRE ROAD / FORESTRY DEPT ONLY. In the absence of a fire, no one would be using that rough dirt track. Mrs. Fischer parked on it, facing out toward the state route, but in far enough among the trees to avoid being seen by passing traffic, of which we had encountered none since turning off the interstate. She damped the headlights, cut the engine.

Over the centuries, the Miriams and the Bernies and the millions like them were the fonts of free and civil societies, which was why the likes of D. J. Michael so despised them and yearned to oppress them; freedom and civility were barriers to absolute power and to the adoration that the powerful could command of others.

Her grief was now doubled by his grief. She wondered how many heartbreaks a child so young could endure.

If you really truly want to know, I've thought if I was ever free someday, I might discover I've held my tears so long that I can't cry anymore, that I'm a dry stone and nothing can ever be wrung from me.

Well, I guess if you were going to spin me up in a cocoon or plant an egg in my brain or kill me, you'd have done it already. Come on in. Can I get you coffee or anything?

Then the clarifying thing happens, and what you need to do, what you must do, is not a question, not demand more revelation than what is given, be quiet in the face of it, quiet and grateful that it has been given to you to see this, to be for even a short time aware of the extraordinary layered depths and profound beauty of the world to which we mostly blind ourselves.

More likely, they would just cease to exist. That's death. No, it's different. Death leaves a corps.

Every human face is more enigmatic than the timeworn expression on the famous Sphinx out there in the sands of Egypt.