Quotes from Dean Koontz

an elevator. The doors of the elevator were gone, as were the cab and the lift mechanism, sold for reuse or for scrap.

Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over every day, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and deeply affecting that the heart is nearly stilled by astonishment. From Vegas, they hauled the Airstream north on

Frustrated, Carl said, 'Ain't we anarchyists?' 'It's pronounced an-are-kists . And no, we aren't.' 'I thought we was.' 'We rule through chaos. That's different.' Carl sounded like a pouting child. 'We need to be doing some anarchyism.' Intellectual arguments between satanists were less witty than I had expected.

When I was a child, which was a shorter period of time for me than it was for most people, my mother sometimes implied that she might take me with her if she decided to consummate her romance with Death. My mother is beautiful, and to anyone who never lived with her, she seems to be a genteel and pleasant lady, if slightly aloof.

She is a girl who feels things strongly, and though cynics might mock her for that, I never will, as it is perhaps the best of graces: the feel deeply, to care profoundly.

Hope lies in action

The stairs creaked. They always creaked when creaking could lead to your death, and they never creaked when creaking didn't matter.

Guilt and shame have, until now, kept me silent on this issue. I am old enough, even if just twenty, to know that I have no logical reason to feel either guilt or shame, that I was the victim, not the victimizer. Yet I've been so long marinated in both emotions that they will forever flavor me.

guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made.

Moral responsibility is on the shoulders of those who take the technology out of the lab and use it to immoral ends.

In life, little happens by chance, and most bad hands we're dealt are the consequence of our actions, which are shaped by our wisdom and our ignorance.

it grinned the foolish and charmingly witless grin of all dogs who had ever ridden shotgun in such a fashion. In

Someone who once said, It's not about the money, it's the kindness, the way it makes the recipient feel special. Life is hard and lonely for many people. If all of us would just make one another feel special now and then—not just with money, but however we can—wouldn't that be lovely?

Trouble was coming, sure, but it's always coming, and meanwhile it's best to live with a smile.

The hypocrisy of human interaction, wherein selflessness was publicly championed and selfishness privately pursued, both amused and disgusted him. Every act of kindness seemed, to him, to be performed only with an eye to the payback that might one day be extracted from the recipient.

That's really specific, ma'am. For a prediction, I mean. It's not a prediction. It's not? Then what is it? It's what is.

To do something, to do what you feel sure is right and in the aid of justice, you sometimes have to do things that, when recalled on lonely nights, make you wonder if in fact you are the good man that you like to believe you are. Such doubts are high cards in the devil's hand, and he knows how to play them well, in hope of bringing you to despair and ennui, if not to self-destruction.

in the perpetual struggle of good and evil, the latter must be resisted without fail.

Listen, did any of those girls feel less pain because Salsbury's evil isn't entirely his own doing? I'm an old-style liberal when it comes to most things. But this liberal line about compassion for the criminal—that's ninety percent horseshit. You

One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.

Only catastrophe can bring about radical change for the better.

one of those doctors who work for nothing in countries that are so poor the people have no money, so they trade with one another using bricks of dry animal dung they can burn to heat their hovels and a few diseased chickens and maybe some edible tubers that they dig out of the floor of a snake-infested jungle

Yes, she was a dog, but not only a dog. I am a man, but not only a man. Sentiment is not sentimentality, common sense is not common ignorance, and intuition is not superstition. Living with a recognition of the spiritual dimension of the world not only ensures a happier life but also a more honest intellectual life than if we allow no room for wonder and refuse to acknowledge the mystery of existence.

There is hope for you yet. -Einstein the Labrador Retriever via scrabble tiles