Quotes from Dean Koontz

And one thing experience has taught me is that life can hammer you hard just when everything seems to be so fine, but life can also drop the most amazing moments of grace on you just when you thought nothing good would ever happen again.

Annamaria insists that mere hours earlier, I saved entire cities, sparing many hundreds of thousands from nuclear terrorism. Even if that is most likely true, I feel as though, in the process, I have forfeited a piece of my soul.

Ed, once called Aladdin, is the first artificial intelligence I've ever known. Maybe if Harry can kill Hiskott and if then I live long enough to see the world become the total science-fiction theme park it seems to be headed toward, I'll probably know dozens of them one day. Let me tell you, if they're all as nice as Ed has turned out to be, that's okay with me.

I was learning how people were with one another, how they acted and reacted and interacted, what they said and how they said it, what they wanted, what they hoped for—more than I could learn from books alone.

I had no idea where he went when he was not with me. Perhaps he enjoyed exploring new places as much as did any living dog, and went off to wander previously unvisited neighborhoods of Magic Beach.

I have known her less than twenty-four hours. And the longer I know her, the more she mystifies me. She is perhaps eighteen, almost four years younger than me, but she seems much older. The things she says are often cryptic, though I feel that the meaning would be clear to me if I were wiser than I am.

In a world sick with envy that leads to coveting that leads to greed that too often results in violence, it wouldn't seem that something as small as excellent muffins could lift a man's spirits, even during talk of murder. But that is the way of the world: sadness and delight, anger and forbearance, hatred and love—all woven together in every inch of the tapestry.

Boo seemed to be less a ghost than he was a guardian spirit, always happy and ready to serve, still on the earth not because he had remained behind after death but because he had been sent back. Consequently, perhaps he had the power and permission to move between worlds as he wished.

Centuries-old ways of looking at the world, centuries-old rules, are jettisoned seemingly overnight. Traditions are mocked and banished. A man—or woman—with an unstable mind sees things falling apart. 'The center cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.' To a psychopath, anarchy is exciting, the chaotic world reflects his chaotic interior life, confirms his conviction that anything should be allowed, that he can rightly do whatever he wants.

Quick now, here, now, always, if we are in a condition of complete simplicity (as the poet said), hope and trust will more reliably keep a man afloat, while fear is more likely to sink him.

a touchstone by which they both could test their commitment to what was good and true in a world of darkness and lies. But a touchstone had value only if they acted with reason, from a sense of duty, rather than because sentimentality overtook them.

I'd guess that what's behind you is much more than what lies ahead, though you have a way to go yet.

ON A DAY LATE THAT JANUARY, I READ AGAIN "EAST Coker" by the poet T. S. Eliot, and saw something that I had forgotten: the stark but beautiful metaphor by which he described God as a wounded surgeon whose bleeding hands apply a scalpel to his patients so that "Beneath the bleeding hands we feel / The sharp compassion of the healer's art.

Perhaps everything else that mattered in a relationship grew from trust—from a tranquil faith in the courage, integrity, and kindness of the other person.

So many things in my continuing education are learned by going where I have to go and doing what I have to do. Therefore, my only answer is: I guess I'll find out.

the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another. I

Not everything that happens during the day is an omen portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth.

Annamaria had me verzekerd dat ik in werkelijkheid maar één keer zou sterven, en dat die dood er op geen enkele manier toe zou doen. Iedereen kent echter dagen waarin we een beetje doodgaan, wanneer we verdriet of een nederlaag te verwerken hebben, of bang zijn, of anderen zien lijden die we enkel medelijden kunnen bieden, geen hulp, mensen die buiten de grenzen van onze genade vallen.

Eccentricity is the universal trait of humanity.

Out of the seething crowd, out of the light and the darkness, came Blossom Rosedale, the one and only Happy Monster, which was a name that she had given herself, not because she loathed the way she looked but because she was truly happy in spite of all her suffering.

kitchen radio brought news that the jihadists who had the previous day seized an ocean liner in the Mediterranean were now beheading passengers.

I understood for the first time why music matters so much, how it reminds us of who we are and where we came from, of all the good times and the sadness, too.

If we rely upon the tao with which we're born, we always know what is the right thing to do in any situation, the good thing not for our bank accounts or for ourselves, but for our souls. We are tempted from the tao by self-interest, by base emotions and passions.

I hate the people who think we're just part of the great unwashed