Quotes from Dean Koontz

Law don't remember it was once handed down from somewhere, that it once meant not just no, but was a way to live and a reason to live that way. Law now thinks nobody but politicians made it or remake it, so maybe it ain't a surprise some people don't care anymore about law, and even some lawmen don't understand the real reason for law.

Sometimes truth was elusive...

Fear is useful when it's on a leash, Avi once said, but it's always a bad dog when you let it run free in your mind.

The Demolished Man.

Lacking television, radio, or internet, she hoards seven CD players with six-disc magazines

boat has been drawn out of the water, onto the sand.

The cold tide of evil rises relentlessly. Although the dikes that resist it can be built higher, the power of such an insistent tide is greater even than the power of a deep sea of water; though perhaps nothing can stand against Evil forever, there is at least a kind of honor in undertaking the effort to restrain the ultimate flood as long as possible.

People like her are everywhere these days. When they believe your lie is the truth, when they fail to see that the freedom you claim to champion is in fact slavery disguised, they'll live by whatever rules you imply without realizing they're being obedient.

Better than a peanut butter and onion sandwich?

Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of a deep hole. The second hand was faith—the faith that her hope would be borne out;

Nor did he grow impatient about the delay, for impatience was a characteristic of those who didn't understand that time flowed to a purpose that neither impatience nor haste could change for the better, though often for the worse.

If you're going to keep the music in you, Jonah, you've got to play a little bit every day purely for the pleasure. Otherwise, you'll lose the joy of it, and if you lose the joy, you won't sound good to those who know piano--or to yourself.

They were stories of things that had never happened and could never happen, but she told them with such quiet verve and conviction that we believed them and wanted to continue believing even after time robbed us of our sense of wonder.

no act of creation was finer or more beautiful than the creation of an intelligent mind.

I guess with artificial intelligence, just like with natural intelligence, there can be a way-creepy side.

That Thursday afternoon, August 26, Vince Nasco drove to Johnny The Wire Santini's place in San Clemente to pick up the past week's report, which was when he learned of the murder of Ted Hockney in Santa Barbara the previous evening. The condition of the corpse, especially the missing eyes, linked it to The Outsider. Johnny had also ascertained that the NSA had quietly assumed jurisdiction in the case, which convinced Vince it was related to the Banodyne fugitives

He is enchanted by the power of the law and by the infinite ways that the system can be manipulated to achieve any desired end.

mellifluous—

And I think a lot more than I used to." "I wouldn't recommend thinking too much." "I don't carry it so far as brooding." "Even pondering is sometimes too far.

eidetic memory

When people think their lives are without meaning, they'll seek meaning even from the creepiest of charlatans

To speak of the past, to describe her ordeal, she has nothing but words, and words are insufficient to the task; mere words will reduce the sacred to tabloid-newspaper sensationalism. And then she'll have nothing.

Few criminals were as cunning, clever, bold, or difficult to catch as a maniac with a mission.

In times as turbulent as these, but also in the seeming humdrum of daily life, which always proved to be more meaningful and consequential in retrospect, each of us needed to rely on people of constant character and truths that were immutable.