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Although The Human Heart Is Selfish And Arrogant, So Many Struggle Against Their Selfishness And Learn Humility; Because Of Them, As Long As There Is Life, There Is Hope That Beauty Lost Can Be Rediscovered, That What Has Been Reviled Can Be Redeemed.

-Dean Koontz

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Although The Human Heart

Dean Koontz

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Although The Human Heart Is Selfish And Arrogant, So Many Struggle Against Their Selfishness And Learn Humility; Because Of Them, As Long As There Is Life, There Is Hope That Beauty Lost Can Be Rediscovered, That What Has Been Reviled Can Be Redeemed.

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Like Being Alone

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Nothing Gives Us Courage More Readily Than The Desire To Avoid Looking Like A Damn Fool.

When Life Hands Us A Beutiful Bouquet Of Flowers We Stare At It In Cautious Expectation Of A Bee.

I've Had Good Publishers And Bad Publishers, And You've Got To Learn When The Advice Is Sensible And When It's Not.

We Are An Arrogant Species, Full Of Terrible Potential, But We Also Have A Great Capacity For Love, Friendship, Generosity, Kindness, Faith, Hope, And Joy.

We Live In God's Amusement Park.

Amusement Parks

I Work On One Page, Revising And Polishing Until I Can't Make It Better, Then Move On To The Next. Some Pages Might Get 20 Or More Drafts Before I Move On.

It Was One Of Those Rare Times When Remembering The Dead Was More Inmportant Than Tending To The Needs Of The Living.

The Best Part Of A Mr. Goodbar Is Not The Wrapper, Is It? No, And The Best Part Of A Coke Is Not The Can. On Those Nights When You Lie Awake, Either Man Or Boy, Wondering About Yourself, Peeling Away One Layer Of Oddness After Another, You Should Remember And Always Be Grateful That The Woefully Imperfect Person That You Are, With All Your Contradictions And Unworthy Desires, Is Not The Best Of You, Any More Than The Wrapper Is The Best Part Of A Mr. Goodbar. -odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse By Dean Koonts Pgs. 354-355 Chapter 53

...in An Infinite Universe, Anything That Could Be Imagined Might Somewhere Exist.

Infinite Universe

I've Not Seen In My Lifetime Any Politician Who Is A Heroic Figure. The Manipulation That All Politicians Use On One Level Or Another Is So Transparent.

The Brain Acknowledged The Approach Of Death While The Heart Stubbornly Insisted Upon Immortality.

Every Book Has Some Real Life In It. I Was Never Pursued By An Evil Twin Clone, But Everything Else In Mr. Murder Was Pretty Much Out Of My Own Life.

If Someone Wrote It And It Had A Peculiar Twist, I've Read It.

What Really Holds Their Marriage Together Are Mutual Respect Of An Awesome Depth, A Shared Sense Of Humor, Faith That They Were Brought Together By A Force Greater Than Themselves, And A Love So Unwavering And Pure That It Is Sacred.

If You Have To Pay The Bills, And You Write Something You're Not Proud Of, Use A Pen-name For That.

As Much As I've Produced It Looks To People Like I Must Have Written Quickly, But It Isn't That - Because I Put In In A Sixty- Or Seventy-hour Week.

The Dead Are Merely The Countrymen Of My Future.

We Are Not Born To Wait. We Are Born To Do.

We Must Seize Life Because We Never Know How Much Of It Remains For Us, That Faith Is The Antidote To Despair And That Laughter Is The Music Of Faith.

As An Attorney, I Assure You The Law Isn't A Line Engraved In Marble, Immovable And Unchangeable Through The Centuries. Rather The Law Is Like A String, Fixed At Both Ends But With A Great Deal Of Play In It Very Loose, The Line Of The Law So You Can Stretch It This Way Or That, Rearrange The Arc Of It So You Are Nearly Always Short Of Blatant Theft Or Cold-blooded Murder Safely On The Right Side. That's A Daunting Thing To Realize But True.

Evil Men Often Easy To Mislead, Because They Have Spent So Long Deceiving That They No Longer Recognise The Truth And Mistake Deseption For It.

Faced With The Challenge Of An Endless Universe, Man Will Be Forced To Mature Further, Just As The Neanderthal-faced With An Entire Planet-had No Choice But To Grow Away From The Tradition Of Savagery.

There Are Thousands Of Proteins In The Cells, Some Of Them Very Large Chains Of Molecules. And The Cell Doesn't Function If One Of Those Chains Of Molecules Isn't There, And You Start Looking At The Complexity Of Life And The Mystery Of Life, And Then Start Thinking About Things Like The Twenty Universal Constants, That If Any One Of Them From Plank's Minimum To The Mass Of A Proton, If One Of Them Is The Tiniest Bit Off, There Would Be No Life Or Possibility Of It In The Universe.

Sorrow Is Not A Raven Perched Persistently Above A Chamber Door. Sorrow Is A Thing With Teeth, And While In Time It Retreats, It Comes Back At The Whisper Of It's Name.

The Opportunity To Love A Dog And To Treat It With Kindness Is An Opportunity For A Lost And Selfish Heart To Be Redeemed. They Are Powerless And Innocent, And It Is How We Treat The Humblest Among Us That Surely Determines The Fate Of Our Souls

Human Beings Are Such Knotted, Desperate Pieces Of Work-it's A Rare Thing To Know One Completely, To The Core, And Still Love Him.

Hope, However, Isn't All That's Needed To Achieve Change. Hope Is A Hand Extended, But Two Hands Are Required To Be Pulled Out Of This Deep Hole. The Second Hand Was Faith.

When Things Are Baffling They Usually Don't Unbaffle Themselves.there's Just, You Know, A Certain Amount Of Baffling Stuff That Always, Like, Really Baffles You, And I've Found That It's Best To Accept Bafflement Whenever It Comes Along, And Then Move On.

Inaction Counted As A Choice.

Although She Had Resisted This Knowledge All Her Life, Had Lived Determinedly In The Future Focused There By Ambition, She Understood At Last That This Was The Real Condition Of Humanity: The Dance Of Life Occurred Not Yesterday Or Tomorrow, But Only Here At The Still Point That Was The Present. This Truth Is Simmple, Sel-evident, But Difficult To Accept, For We Sentimentalize The Past And Wallow In It, While We Endure The Moment And In Every Waking Hour Dream Of The Future.

Anger Is A Violent Emotion, Vindictive, And As Dangerous To He Who Is Driven By It As To Anyone On Whom It Is Turned.

Even If God Exists, Does He Know That You Do?

The Desire To Write Well Can Never Be Fulfilled Without Hard Work.

Because God Is Never Cruel, There Is A Reason For All Things. We Must Know The Pain Of Loss; Because If We Never Knew It, We Would Have No Compassion For Others, And We Would Become Monsters Of Self-regard, Creatures Of Unalloyed Self-interest. The Terrible Pain Of Loss Teaches Humility To Our Prideful Kind, Has The Power To Soften Uncaring Hearts, To Make A Better Person Of A Good One.

There Are Days When It Seems To Me That In Literature The Most Convincing Depiction Of The World In Which We Live Is To Be Found In The Phantasmagorical Kingdom Through Which Lewis Carroll Took Alice On A Tour.

Nothing Is Worse Than Being Alone On The Evening Of The Day When One's Cow Has Exploded.

Blizzards, Floods, Volcanos, Hurricanes, Earthquakes: They Fascinate Because They Nakedly Reveal That Mother Nature, Afflicted With Bipolar Disorder, Is As Likely To Snuff Us As She Is To Succor Us.

I Never Discuss A Novel While I'm Writing It, For Fear That Talking About It Will Diminish My Desire To Write It.

The Heart Is An Artist That Paints Over What Profoundly Disturbs It, Leaving On The Canvas A Less Dark, Less Sharp Version Of The Truth.

I Build A Book The Way Coral Reefs Are Built: Millions Of Little Calcareous Skeletons Piling Up One Atop Another, Though In My Case The Skeletons Are Drafts.

Night Has Patterns That Can Be Read Less By The Living Than By The Dead.

Every Life Is Complicated, Every Mind A Kingdom Of Unmapped Mysteries.

Each Book Is A Mind Alive, A Life Revealed, A World Awaiting Exploration, But Living People Are All Those Things, As Well—and More, Because Their Stories Haven’t Yet Been Completely Told.

The Broom Wasn't As Comforting As A Flamethrower Would Have Been, But It Was Better Than A Mop And Certainly More Threatening Than A Feather Duster.

I Love My Editor, But That Would Be The Definition Of Hell To Me To Live With Someone And Have Them Go Page By Page Through My Manuscript. That I Want To Avoid At All Costs.

There’s Just Something Unsettling About Studying Your Reflection. It’s Not A Matter Of Being Dissatisfied With Your Face Or Of Being Embarrassed By Your Vanity. Maybe It’s That When You Gaze Into Your Own Eyes, You Don’t See What You Wish To See—or Glimpse Something That You Wish Weren’t There.

In A World That Daily Disconnects Further From Truth, More And More People Accept The Virtual In Place Of The Real, And All Things Virtual Are Also Malleable.

Books Had Shown Me, However, That All People Everywhere Wanted Their Lives To Have Purpose And Meaning. This Longing Was Universal.

Out Of Sight Above The House, The Mirror Moon Reflected The Sun Of A Day Not Yet Dawned, Shining The Pale Light Of Tomorrow On The Yard And On The Paper Birches.

If You Write With Passion In Your Own Style, You Will Make A Place For Yourself

Lots Of People Are Unable To See All Kinds Of Truths Right In Front Of Their Eyes." "the World Is What We Make It, And Our Future Is Ours To Shape.

The Worst Happens When You Least Expect It

Change Isn't Easy. Changing The Way You Live Means Changing The Way You Think, Means Changing What You Believe About Life. That's Hard.

Although The Human Heart Is Selfish And Arrogant, So Many Struggle Against Their Selfishness And Learn Humility; Because Of Them, As Long As There Is Life, There Is Hope That Beauty Lost Can Be Rediscovered, That What Has Been Reviled Can Be Redeemed.

My Life Would Be Constrained By The Horror And Fierce Rage That My Appearance Inspired, But I Would Know Peace As Well As Fear, Tenderness As Well As Brutality, And Even Love In A Time Of Cruelty.

If I Waited Until I Felt Creative, I Would Never Have Had A Career. I Long Ago Learned That A Day That Starts Out Badly, When Nothing Comes Out On The Page Or Comes Out Wrong, Can Suddenly Turn Into A Good Day A Few Hours Later, When Suddenly Everything Starts To Click. The Brain Can Be Cajoled Into Being Creative.

Of All The Things We Can Feel With Our Minds And Bodies, Severe Pain Is The Purest, For It Drives Everything Else From Our Awareness And Focuses Us As Perfectly As We Can Ever Be Focused.

Not All Popular Novelists Are Good, But All Good Novelists Are, Sooner Or Later, Popular.

Sooner Or Later

The World Is A Very Complex And Interesting Place And That Is What I Really Want My Fiction To Say: Wake Up To How Amazing The World Is.

I Have Learned A Great Deal From Novels. Some Of It Is Even True.

The Snow Did Not Even Whisper Its Way To Earth, But Seemed To Salt The Night With Silence.

Home Is The First Refuge From - And Last Defense Against - The Disappointments And The Terrors Of Life.

One Of The Greatest Gifts We Receive From Dogs Is The Tenderness They Evoke In Us

In Our Age, Self-indulgence And Self-destruction, Rather Than Self-sacrifice, Are The Foundations For New Heroic Myths.

Six Billion Of Us Walking The Planet, Six Billion Smaller Worlds On The Bigger One. Shoe Salesmen And Short-order Cooks Who Look Boring From The Outside - Some Have Weirder Lives Than You. Six Billion Stories, Every One An Epic, Full Of Tragedy And Triumph, Good And Evil, Despair And Hope. You And Me - We Aren't So Special, Bro.

Imagine That You Are More Than Nothing. Evil Made You, But You Are No More Evil Than A Child Unborn. If You Want, If You Seek, If You Hope, Who Is To Say That Your Hope Might Not Be Answered?

Language Can't Describe Reality. Literature Has No Stable Reference, No Real Meaning. Each Reader's Interpretation Is Equally Valid, More Important Than The Author's Intention. In Fact, Nothing In Life Has Meaning. Reality Is Subjective. Values And Truths Are Subjective. Life Itself Is A Kind Of Illusion. Blah, Blah, Blah, Let's Have Another Scotch.

A Politician's Goal Is Always To Manipulate Public Debate. I Think There Are Some Politicians With Higher Goals. But All Of Them Get Corrupted By Power.

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

Where There Is Cake, There Is Hope. And There Is Always Cake.

Please, Don't Torture Me With Cliches. If You're Going To Try To Intimidate Me, Have The Courtesy To Go Away For A While, Acquire A Better Education, Improve Your Vocabulary, And Come Back With Some Fresh Metaphors.

The Human Species Was Too Fond Of Lying, Cheating, Envy, Ignorance, Self-pity, Self-righteousness, And Utopian Visions That Always Led To Mass Murder-but Until And If It Destroyed Itself, It Harbored The Potential To Become Nobler, To Take Responsibility For Its Actions, To Live And Let Live, And To Earn The Stewardship Of The Earth.

Despair Is Good. Despair Can Be The Nadir Of One Life And The Starting Point Of An Ascent Into Another, Better One.

I Believe That I Was A Dog In A Past Life. That's The Only Thing That Would Explain Why I Like To Snack On Purina Dog Chow.

The Primitive In Each Of Us Climbs Closer To The Surface During The Night, For The Moon Sings To It, And The Cold Void Between The Stars Speaks Its Language. To That Savage Self, Evil Can Look Lovely In Too Little Light.

Besides, I Can't Get To Where I Want To Go By Conscious Or Unconscious Suicide. I've Got My Strange Little Life To Lead. Leading It The Best I Can - That's How I Buy The Ticket To Where I Want To Be.

Pain Is All I Know." He Murmured. "peace Is All I Want

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