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Billy Pilgrim Had A Theory About Diaries. Women Were More Likely Than Men To Think That Their Lives Had Sufficient Meaning To Require Recording On A Daily Basis. It Was Not For The Most Part A God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey Kind Of Meaning, But More An I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares Sentimentalism That Passed For Meaning, And They Usually Stopped Keeping A Diary By The Time They Hit Thirty, Because By Then They Didn't Want To Ponder The Meaning Of Life Anymore Because It Scared The Crap Out Of Them.

-Dean Koontz

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Billy Pilgrim Had A

Dean Koontz

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Billy Pilgrim Had A Theory About Diaries. Women Were More Likely Than Men To Think That Their Lives Had Sufficient Meaning To Require Recording On A Daily Basis. It Was Not For The Most Part A God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey Kind Of Meaning, But More An I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares Sentimentalism That Passed For Meaning, And They Usually Stopped Keeping A Diary By The Time They Hit Thirty, Because By Then They Didn't Want To Ponder The Meaning Of Life Anymore Because It Scared The Crap Out Of Them.

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I Have Been Reading Stephen King Since Carrie And Hope To Read Him For Many Years To Come.

No Degree Of Prosperity Can Be Sufficient To Eliminate All Misfortune, And Sloth Is Impervious To Opportunity.

I See Dead People. But, Then By God, I Do Something About It!

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.

Only Once In A Generation Does Anything As Fresh As A Vomiting Detective Come Along.

Hunches [are] Just Messages From The Subconscious, Which [is] Thinking Furiously All The Time And Processing Information We Have Not Consciously Noted.

Cowards Shrink From Toil And Peril, Vulgar Souls Attempt And Fail; Men Of Mettle, Nothing Daunted, Persevere Till They Prevail.

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

...like A Scene From The Swamps Of Louisiana Or The Mind Of Poe On Opium.

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.

No One's Life Should Be Rooted In Fear. We Are Born For Wonder, For Joy, For Hope, For Love, To Marvel At The Mystery Of Existence, To Be Ravished By The Beauty Of The World, To Seek Truth And Meaning, To Acquire Wisdom, And By Our Treatment Of Others To Brighten The Corner Where We Are.

Southerners Have Many Fine Qualities, Charm And Civility Among Them, And A Sense Of The Tragic.

Being Alone Can Be Good. It's Easy To Find Peace Alone. But Sometimes, Being Alone Is A King Of Death.

I Do Give Books As Gifts Sometimes, When People Would Rather Have One Than A New Ferrari.

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

There's No Use Wasting Are Energy Being Afraid Of The Devils, Demons And Things That Go Bump In The Night... Because Ultimately We'll Never Encounter Anything More Terrifying Than The Monster Among Us. Hell Is Where We Make It.

But Victimhood Was Seductive, A Release From Responsibility And Caring. Fear Would Be Transmuted Into Weary Resignation; Failure Would No Longer Generate Guilt But, Instead, Would Spawn A Comforting Self-pity.

Experts Must Read The Patterns And Judge Their Usefulness As Evidence. Under Any Of Numerous Pressures, An Expert May Wish To Misread A Pattern Or Even To Alter It. Americans Had A Touching Trust In "experts".

She Blinked, Sat Up, And Saw Chris In The Bathroom Doorway. He'd Just Gotten Out The Shower. His Hair Was Damp, And He Was Dressed Only In His Briefs. The Sight Of His Thin, Boyish Body - All Ribs And Elbows And Knees - Pulled At Her Heart, For He Looked So Innocent And Vulnerable. He Was So Small And Fragile That She Wondered How She Could Ever Protect Him, And Renewed Fear Rose In Her.

I've Since Discovered That Many Human Beings Need No Supernatural Mentoring To Commit Acts Of Savagery; Some People Are Devils In Their Own Right, Their Telltale Horns Having Grown Inward To Facilitate Their Disguise.

Maybe I'm Needy, Neurotic, Paranoid. Under The Circumstances, Of Course, If I Weren't Needy, Neurotic, And Paranoid, I'd Obviously Be Psychotic.

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.

Whiskers Of The Cat, Webbed Toes On My Swimming Dog; God Is In The Details.

I've Always Operated With A Great Deal Of Self-doubt. Every Time I Start A New Book It's Like, Well, This One Will Destroy The Career And I Have To Overcome That Feeling Especially In The First Hundred Pages Of The Book.

The Hands Of Every Clock Are Shears, Trimming Us Away Scrap By Scrap, And Every Time Piece With A Digital Readout Blinks Us Towards Implosion.

I've A Long List Of Things I Don't Know How I've Done, But I've Done Them. In The End, It's Always About Perseverance.

He Was Sure That He Was Not The Cause Of The Abrupt Silence. His Passage Through The Canyon Had Not Previously Disturbed Either Birds Or Cicadas. Something Was Out There. An Intruder Of Which The Ordinary Forest Creatures Clearly Did Not Approve. He Took A Deep Breath And Held It Again, Straining To Hear The Slightest Movement In The Woods. This Time He Detected The Rustle Of Brush, A Snapping Twig, The Soft Crunch Of Dry Leaves-and The Unnervingly Peculiar, Heavy, Ragged Breathing Of Something Big.

Books Were This Wonderful Escape For Me Because I Could Open A Book And Disappear Into It, And That Was The Only Way Out Of That House When I Was A Kid.

Even As A Child, She Had Preferred Night To Day, Had Enjoyed Sitting Out In The Yard After Sunset, Under The Star-speckled Sky Listening To Frogs And Crickets. Darkness Soothed. It Softened The Sharp Edges Of The World, Toned Down The Too-harsh Colors. With The Coming Of Twilight, The Sky Seemed To Recede; The Universe Expanded. The Night Was Bigger Than The Day, And In Its Realm, Life Seemed To Have More Possibilities.

How Passionately We Love Everything That Cannot Last: The Dazzling Crystallory Of Winter, The Spring In Bloom, The Fragile Flight Of Butterflies, Crimson Sunsets, A Kiss, And Life.

All These Girls Swooning Over Hunky Vampires, What They Really Want Is To Give Away Their Freedom, To Be Controlled And Told What To Do And Not Have To Think -- And Never Die, Of Course. It's Sick Is What It Is. I Don't Want To Be A Forever-young Living Corpse.

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

A Good Dog Is One Of The Best Things Of All To Be.

People Who Go To Work Every Day, Make Sacrifices To Raise Families, And Get Through Life Without Hurting Other People If They Can Help It-those Are The Real Heros.

I Really Believe That Everyone Has A Talent, Ability, Or Skill That He Can Mine To Support Himself And To Succeed In Life.

Ignorance Isn't Bliss, But Sometimes Ignorance Makes It Possible For Us To Sleep At Night.

Every Human Being Has Appetites Difficult To Control But Far Fewer Have Humility, Gentleness, And An Awareness Of Their Weaknesses.

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.

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.

It's Only Life. We All Get Through It. Not All Of Us Complete The Journey In The Same Condition. Along The Way, Some Lose Their Legs Or Eyes In Acidents Or Altercations, While Others Skate Through The Years With Nothing Worse To Worry About Than An Occassional Bad-hair Day. I Still Possessed Both Legs And Both Eyes, And Even My Hair Looked All Right When I Rose That Wednesday Morning In Late January. If I Returned To Bed Sixteen Hours Later, Having Lost All My Hair But Nothing Else, I Would Consider The Day A Triumph. Even Minus A Few Teeth, I'd Call It A Triumph.

While I Like People, I Do Also Like Being Alone In A Room And Seeing What You Can Do With A Particular Theme Or Subject.

Like Being Alone

Loving The Ideal More Than The Reality Is The Cause Of All The Misery The Human Species Creates For Itself.

Few Human Beings Give Of Themselves To Another As A Dog Gives Of Itself.

You've Taught Me That We're All Needed, Even Those Who Sometimes Think We're Worthless, Plain And Dull. If We Love And Allow Ourselves To Be Loved...well, A Person Who Loves Is The Most Precious Thing In The World, Worth All The Fortunes That Ever Were. That's What You've Taught Me, Fur Face,and Because Of You I'll Never Be The Same.

Vladimir Nabokov Said The Two Great Evils Of The 20th Century Were Marx And Freud. He Was Absolutely Correct.

Being Paid Well For Something You Love To Do - It's A Grace.

Something You Love

A Short-order Cook, Just Off Work, Makes Easy Tracking For Lions And Worse

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

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

I Receive About 10,000 Letters A Year From Readers, And In The First Year After A Book Is Published, Perhaps 5,000 Letters Will Deal Specifically With That Piece Of Work.

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.

Although The Constant Shadow Of Certain Death Looms Over Everyday, The Pleasures And Joys Of Life Can Be So Fine And Affecting That The Heart Is Nearly Stilled In Astonishment.

Sometimes It Seemed That The Human Heart, This Side Of Eden, Feared Life More Than Death, Light More Than Darkness, Freedom More Than Surrender.

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Less Real Than Such Threats As A Man With A Gun, A Woman With A Knife, Or A U.s. Senator With An Idea.

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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.

There's Still A Fascination With Somebody Who Can Write At Book Length, No Matter What The Book Is.

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.

Books Are Packaged Dreams.

Pain Is A Gift. Humanity, Without Pain, Would Know Neither Fear Nor Pity.

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

There's Lots Of Law These Days, But Not Much Justice.

I Fall Down On The Side Of Free Will, Simply Because If You Look At Where I Came From, And What I Was Able To Do In My Life, What Was Able To Happen.

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

Sooner Or Later

I Just Became Fascinated With How Complex And Unlikely The Universe Is And Life Is And Catholicism Gives Me An Answer To That.

...at It's Best Fiction Is Medicine.

Do As Little Harm To Others As You Can; Make Any Sacrifice For Your True Friends; Be Responsible For Yourself And Ask Nothing Of Others; And Grab All The Fun You Can. Don't Give Much Thought To Yesterday, Don't Worry About Tomorrow, Live In The Moment, And Trust That Your Existence Has Meaning Even When The World Seems To Be All Blind Chance And Chaos. When Life Lands A Hammer Blow In Your Face, Do Your Best To Respond To The Hammer As If It Had Been A Cream Pie.

I Can't Go On To Page Two Until I Can Get Page One As Perfect As I Can Make It. That Might Mean I Will Rewrite And Rewrite Page One 20, 30, 50, 100 Times.

He Is Different, And There Will Be Many People You Love Who Will Be Unhappy With You. You Don’t Want Them To Feel You’ve Dishonored Them. Yes, I Know How It Is. But Life Is Short. A Chance For Great Happiness Doesn’t Come Along All That Often.

I Can Love October In September. September Doesn’t Care.

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.

Books Showed Me That There Were Other Ways To Live A Life.

Life Without Meaning Cannot Be Borne. We Find A Mission To Which We're Sworn -or Answer The Call Of Death's Dark Horn. Without A Gleaning Of Purpose In Life, We Have No Vision, We Live In Strife, -or Let Blood Fall On A Suicide Knife.

There's Never Any Humongous Next Draft. I Know A Writer Who Every Time He Finished A Novel - You Would Know His Name Very Well - But His Editor Would Come And Live With Him For A Month. And They Would Go Through The Manuscript Together.

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.

Responsibility To Others

Sense Of Responsibility

I Never Have Lunch Because It Makes Me Foggy-headed.

He Felt ... A Suspicion-no, A Conviction-than He Had Been Abandoned, Forgotten, And That No One In The Whole World Cared Or Would Ever Care Enough About Him To Really Find Out What He Was Like And What His Dreams Were. He Was An Outcast, A Creature Somehow Vastly Different From All Other People, An Object Of Scorn And Derision, An Outsider, Secretly Loathed And Ridiculed By Everyone Who Met Him, Even By Those Few Who Professed To Love Him.

More To The Point, I Know Why Soldiers, Home From War, Seldom Tell Their Families About Their Exploits In More Than General Terms. We Who Survive Must Go On In The Names Of Those Who Fall, But If We Dwell Too Much On The Vivid Details Of What We've Witnessed Of Man's Inhumanity To Man, We Simply Can't Go On. Perseverance Is Impossible If We Don't Permit Ourselves To Hope.

She'd Been Acutely Aware That Terror, Betrayal, And Cruelty Had A Human Face, But She Had Not Sufficiently Appreciated That Courage, Kindness, And Love Had A Human Face As Well.

I Always Enjoyed The Kids, But I Didn't Enjoy The Bureaucracy Of The Educational System.

Golden Retrievers Are Not Bred To Be Guard Dogs, And Considering The Size Of Their Hearts And Their Irrepressible Joy In Life, They Are Less Likely To Bite Than To Bark, Less Likely To Bark Than To Lick A Hand In Greeting. In Spite Of Their Size, They Think They Are Lap Dogs, And In Spite Of Being Dogs, They Think They Are Also Human, And Nearly Every Human They Meet Is Judged To Have The Potential To Be A Boon Companion Who Might, At Many Moment, Cry, "let's Go!" And Lead Them On A Great Adventure.

I Am No Theologian. I Would Not Be Surprised, However, If Heaven Proved To Be A Cozy Kitchen, Where Delicious Treats Appeared In The Oven And In The Refrigerator Whenever You Wanted Them, And Where The Cupboards Were Full Of Good Books.

There's Sometimes A Weird Benefit To Having An Alcoholic, Violent Father. He Really Motivated Me In That I Never Wanted To Be Anything Like Him.

The Biggest Advice Is Being True To What You Want To Do. Don't Worry If Other People Understand It Or Don't Understand It. If What You're Doing Has Merit, It Will Find Its Way.

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.

I Imagined A Life That Turned Out To Be Pretty Much Exactly Like The One I've Had. That Fascinates Me Endlessly. I Wake Up Many Mornings, And It Almost Wouldn't Surprise Me If I Woke Up From It And It Was All A Dream.

The True Nature Of The World Was Weirder Than Any Bizarre Fabric That Anyone Might Weave From The Warp And Weft Of Imagination's Loom.

I Enjoy The Hell Out Of Writing But Don't Like What Follows: Promotion And Publicity, Which I Always Strive To Keep To A Minimum, Sometimes To My Publisher's Dismay.

Change Isn't Easy... Changing The Way You Live Means Changing What You Believe About Life. That's Hard... When We Make Our Own Misery, We Sometimes Cling To It Even When We Want So Bad To Change Because The Misery Is Something We Know. The Misery Is Comfortable.

These Days, People Spent Too Much Time Striving To Understand Their Feelings - And Then Ended Up With None That Were Genuine.

Too Much Mystery Is Merely An Annoyance. Too Much Adventure Is Exhausting. And A Little Terror Goes A Long Way.

Those Who Wish To Punish The Current And Future Generations For The Inequities Of A Generation Long Gone, And Who Equate Justice With Revenge, Are The Most Dangerous People In The World.

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.

That Is, Jack Thought, The Way Of Life. The Horror Changes Us, Because We Can Never Forget. Cursed With Memory. It Starts When We're Old Enough To Know What Death Is And Realize That Sooner Or Later We'll Lose Everyone We Love. We're Never The Same. But Somehow We're All Right. We Go On.

On Those Occasions When He Had Killed In The Dark, He Later Needed To See His Victims' Faces Because, In Some Unlit Corner Of His Heart, He Half Expected To Find His Own Face Looking Up At Him, Ice-white And Dead-eyed. "deep Down," The Dream-victim Had Said, "you Know That You're Already Dead Yourself, Burnt Out Inside. You Realize That You Have Far More In Common With Your Victims After You've Killed Them Than Before.

We Are Coming Out Of A Century That Was Taught That One Way Of Looking At The World, That One Form Of Behavior, Is As Valid As Another. The Idea Of True Evil Has Been Blown Away.

Inaction Counted As A Choice.

We Are Buried When We're Born. The World Is A Place Of Graves Occupied And Graves Potential. Life Is What Happens While We Wait For Our Appointment With The Mortician.

A Scar Is Not Always A Flaw. Sometimes A Scar May Be Redemption Inscribed In The Flesh, A Memorial To Something Endured, To Something Lost.

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

I Can Remember The Times When I Started Including Humor In Novels That Were Suspenseful. I Was Told You Can't Do That Because You Can't Keep The Audience In Suspense If They're Laughing. My Attitude Was, If The Character Has A Sense Of Humor, Then That Makes The Character More Real Because That's How We Deal With The Vicissitudes Of Life, We Deal With It Through Humor.

...what Makes Humanity Beautiful Is Our Free Will, Our Individuality, Our Endless Striving In Spite Of Our Imperfection. By The Light Of The Moon Chapter 27 Page 214

I Am Basically A Pretty Good Autodidact. I Can Teach Myself Things.

Dogs Invite Us Not Only To Share Their Joy But Also To Live In The Moment, Where We Are Neither Proceeding From Nor Moving Toward, Where The Enchantment Of The Past And Future Cannot Distract Us, Where A Freedom From Practical Desire And A Cessation Of Our Usual Ceaseless Action Allows Us To Recognize The Truth Of Our Existence, The Reality Of Our World And Purpose--if We Dare.

In Real Life During The Last Decade Of The Twentieth Century, Rumpelstiltskin Would Probably Get The Queen's Daughter. He Would No Doubt Addict Her To Heroin, Turn Her Out As A Prostitute, Confiscate Her Earnings, Beat Her For Pleasure, Hack Her To Pieces, And Escape Justice By Claiming That Society's Intolerance For Bad-tempered, Evil-minded Trolls Had Driven Him Temporarily Insane.

Envy, Envy Eats Them Alive. If You Had Money, They’d Envy You That. But Since You Don’t, They Envy You For Having Such A Good, Bright, Loving Daughter. They Envy You For Just Being A Happy Man. They Envy You For Not Envying Them. 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.

If You Want To Publish Two Books A Year Under Your Own Name And Your Publisher Doesn't, Maybe You Need A Different Publisher.

We Are Not Strangers To Ourselves, We Only Try To Be.

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.

Every Talent Is Unearned, However, And With It Comes A Solemn Obligation To Use It As Fully And As Wisely As Possible.

I Don't Write A Quick Draft And Then Revise; Instead, I Work Slowly Page By Page, Revising And Polishing.

Best Thing That Can Happen To A Man Is A Good Woman.

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

I Don't Procrastinate Because I Love The English Language And The Process Of Storytelling, And I'm Always Curious To See What Will Come To Me Next. If You Procrastinate A Lot, You Might Be One Who Loves Having Written, But Doesn't So Much Like Writing.

Here In The Summer Desert, Winter Found My Blood

I Am My Own Worst Enemy. This, More Than Any Other Trait, Proves My Fundamental Humanity.

As An Adult I Discovered That I Was A Pretty Good Autodidact, And Can Teach Myself All Kind Of Things. And Developed A Great Interest In A Number Of Different Things From How To Build A Street Hot Rod From The Ground Up To Quantum Mechanics, And Those Two Different Kinds Of Mechanics, And It Was Really In The Sciences, Quantum Mechanics, Molecular Biology, I Would Begin Looking At These Things Looking For Ideas, But In Fact You Don't Read It For Ideas You Read It For Curiosity And Interest In The Subject.

The Destruction That Barbarians Leave Behind Has A Grim Fascination, Doesn't It? We're Reminded How Thin Is The Veneer Of Civilization.

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

We Wasn't Born To Be All The Time Scared, We Was Born Happy.

Death Came, Death Went, But Commerce Flowed Eternal.

If God Is An Author And The Universe Is The Biggest Novel Ever Written, I May Feel As If I'm The Lead Character In The Story, But Like Every Man And Woman On Earth, I Am A Suporting Player In One Of Billions Of Subplots. You Know What Happens To Supporting Players. Too Often They Are Killed Off In Chapter 3, Or In Chapter 10, Or In Chapter 35. A Supporting Player Always Has To Be Looking Over His Shoulder.

Grapes Are Juicy. Strawberries. Oranges. Good Pork Chops Are Succulent," Said Dusty. "but The Word Isn't Accurately Descriptive Of A Person." Smiling With Delight, Ahriman Said, "oh, Really, Not Accurately Descriptive? Be Careful Housepainter. Your Genes Are Showing. What If I Were A Cannibal?

It Is Human Nature To Want To Believe In The Wizardry Of The Magician--but Also To Turn Against Him And To Scorn Him The Moment That He Commits The Slightest Error That Reveals His Trickery. Those In The Audience Are Embarrassed To Have Been So Easily Astonished, And They Blame The Performer For Their Gullibility.

You Know What's Wrong With Humanity?... The Greatest Gift We Were Given Is Our Free Will, And We Keep Misusing It.

Always, Beneath Every Apparent Chaos, Order Waits To Be Revealed.

I Think The World Is An Interesting Place And I Don't Think Anybody Has The Firm And Final Answer To What It Is But I Kind Of Assume There's A Purpose.

Maybe When All Was Said And Done, The Imagination Was The Most Powerful Of All Weapons. It Was The Imagination Of The Human Race That Had Allowed It To Dream Of A Life Beyond Cold Caves And Of A Possible Future In The Stars.

In Tragedy And Despair, When An Endless Night Seems To Have Fallen, Hope Can Be Found In The Realization Taht The Companion Of Night Is Not Another Night, That The Companion Of Night Is Day, That Darkness Always Gives Way To Light, And That Death Rules Only Half Of Creation, Life The Other Half.

When Social Forces Press For The Rejection Of Age-old Truth, Then Those Who Reject It Will Seek Meaning In Their Own Truth. These Truths Will Rarely Be Truth At All; They Will Be Only Collections Of Personal Preferences And Prejudices.

When It Came To Formal Classes, I Was A Slacker. But I've Always Been A Diligent Autodidact And Can Teach Myself Virtually Any Subject If I Have A Serious Interest In It.

The Dead Are Merely The Countrymen Of My Future.

Time Doesn’t, As Advertised, Heal All Wounds. Although The Wrenching Immediacy Of Grief Eventually Passed, The Settled Sorrow That Replaced It Might In Its Own Way Be Even More Intense.

That's All That Matters, Really: That We Can Make Each Other Feel Better.

Are You Prepared For The First Wound?

The Mockery Of Friends Is Affectionate, And Inoculates Against Foolishness.

Somebody Asked Me About The Current Choice We're Being Given In The Presidential Election. I Said, Well, It's Like Two Of The Scariest Movies I Can Imagine.

Maybe The Devil In Human Beings Isn't The Reflection Of The Devil, Perhaps The Devil Is Only A Reflection Of The Savagery And Brutality Of Our Kind. Maybe What We've Done Is Create The Devil In Our Own Image

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, And These Were Apparently Good Enough That They Had Not Felt The Need For Razor Wire At The Top. I Crested The Fence, Threw Myself Into The Yard Beyond, Fell, Rolled To My Feet, And Ran With The Expectation Of Being Garroted By A Taut Clothesline. I Heard Panting, Looked Down, And Saw A Gold Retriever Running At My Side, Ears Flapping. The Dog Glanced Up At Me Tongue Rolling, Grinning, As Though Jazzed By The Prospect Of An Unscheduled Play Session.

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

Funny, How One Good Cookie Could Calm The Mind And Even Elevate A Troubled Soul.

Billy Pilgrim Had A Theory About Diaries. Women Were More Likely Than Men To Think That Their Lives Had Sufficient Meaning To Require Recording On A Daily Basis. It Was Not For The Most Part A God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey Kind Of Meaning, But More An I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares Sentimentalism That Passed For Meaning, And They Usually Stopped Keeping A Diary By The Time They Hit Thirty, Because By Then They Didn't Want To Ponder The Meaning Of Life Anymore Because It Scared The Crap Out Of Them.

The Recognition Of Pain And Fear In Others Give Rise In Us To Pity, And In Our Pity Is Our Humanity, Our Redemption.

Darkness Dwells Within Even The Best Of Us. In The Worst Of Us, Darkness Not Only Dwells But Reigns.

I Think The World Is Full Of Evil People. I Think In Some Ways We're In More Danger Now Than Before.

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.

Any Drunk Who Has Tried To Put His Car Where A Lamppost Stands Is A Self-educated Physicist.

I Believe That We Carry Within Us A Divinely Inspired Moral Imperative To Love ... We Have Within Us The Ability To Change For The Better And To Find Dignity As Individuals Rather Than As Drones In One Mass Movement Or Another. We Have The Ability To Love, The Need To Be Loved, And The Willingness To Put Our Own Lives On The Line To Protect Those We Love, And It Is In These Aspects Of Ourselves That We Can Glimpse The Face Of God; And Through The Exercise Of These Qualities, We Come To A Godlike State.

One Of The Things I Like Enormously About Bob Weinstein Is That That He's The Only Studio Head I Have Ever Known Who Will Change His Mind And Say He Was Wrong.

Perhaps Extreme Danger Strips Us Of All Pretenses, All Ambitions, All Confusions, Focusing Us More Intensely Than We Are Otherwise Ever Focused, So That We Remember What We Otherwise Spend Most Of Our Lives Forgetting: That Our Nature And Purpose Is, More Than Anything Else, To Love And To Make Love, To Take Joy From The Beauty Of The World, To Live With An Awareness That The Future Is Not As Real A Place For Any Of Us As Are The Present And The Past.

The Sane Understand That Human Beings Are Incapable Of Sustaining Conspiracies On A Grand Scale, Because Some Of Our Most Defining Qualities As A Species Are Inattention To Detail, A Tendency To Panic, And An Inability To Keep Our Mouths Shut.

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.

Modesty Is Related To Diffidence, Diffidence Is Related To Shyness, Shyness Is A Synonym For Timidity, Timidity Is A Characteristic Of The Meek, The Meek Do Not Inherit The Earth, They Serve Those Who Are Self Confident And Self Assertive.

Every Expression Of Desired Friendship Has Potential Bite. Every Smile Reveals The Teeth.

I'm Either A Mutant Or A Cripple, And I Refuse To Be A Cripple. People Pity Cripples, But They're Afraid Of Mutants [...] Fear Implies Respect.

Sometimes Waiting Is The Hardest Thing.

It's Only Life. We All Get Through It.

Fear Is A Hammer, And When The People Are Beaten Finally To The Conviction That Their Existence Hangs By A Frayed Thread, They Will Be Led Where They Need To Go.

Never Leave A Friend Behind. Friends Are All We Have To Get Us Through This Life--and They Are The Only Things From This World That We Could Hope To See In The Next.

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.

Creating A Family In This Turbulent World Is An Act Of Faith, A Wager That Against All Odds There Will Be A Future, That Love Can Last, That The Heart Can Triumph Against All Adversities And Even Against The Grinding Wheel Of Time.

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.

It May Sound Strange, But When You're A Kid And You're In That Environment, For Some Reason For A Long Time You Think, When The Doors Are Closed In Other Houses, This Is What It's Like Everywhere. And Then At Some Point You Begin To Realize That Isn't True, And Books Were Really The Educational System That Showed Me That There Were Many Better And Different Ways To Live A Life.

I Realized You Might Make Money At Writing, And You Might Even Make A Living At It. So After That I Didn't Write Stories Just For The Class But Wrote Them For The Purpose Of Submitting Them Somewhere, And At Some Point In The Process, I Began Writing Them Just To Please Myself And That's Where You Begin To See The Real Value Of A Life Of Writing.

I Am Sustained By The Certainty That Life Has Meaning...as Does Death.

Duty Doesn't Need To Call; It Only Needs To Whisper. And If You Heed The Call, No Matter What Happens, You Have No Need For Regret." Odd Thomas

I Have To Admit That When I Watch A Movie In Which There Is No Moral Context For The Violence - I Find That Offensive. I Think That's Potentially Damaging To Society.

To A Predator, Fear Indicates Weakness.

I Don't Mean To Imply That I'm Afraid Of Death. I'm Just Not Ready To Go Out On A Date With Him.

We Never Had Books In The House. Not Any Book In Our House. Not A Bible, Not Anything. So, I Would Go The Library From A Very Young Age And Get The Books Out.

You Won't Find The Truth Of Life In Morbidity, Only In Hope.

If I Had To Write A Rough Draft, All The Way Through And Then Go Back And Start Over, I Probably Would Just Stop Writing. I Wouldn't Find That Interesting. I Would Feel That I Had Committed So Many Things To The Paper That I Couldn't Easily Undo Because One Thing Leads To The Next, The Interconnectedness, The Sequences Would Make It Very Hard To Change Something That Simply Didn't Work.

The Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.

Behind Every Closed Door Might Wait A Thief Of Minds And A Collector Of Souls.

No One Can Grant You Happiness. Happiness Is A Choice We All Have The Power To Make.

Happiness Is A Choice

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

What Will Happen Will Happen. There Is Time For Miracles Until There Is No More Time, But Time Has No End.

She Was Fascinated With Words. To Her, Words Were Things Of Beauty, Each Like A Magical Powder Or Potion That Could Be Combined With Other Words To Create Powerful Spells.

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

The Answer To The Mystery Of Existence Is The Love You Shared Sometimes So Imperfectly, And When The Loss Wakes You To The Deeper Beauty Of It, To The Sanctity Of It, You Can't Get Off Your Knees For A Long Time, You're Driven To Your Knees Not By The Weight Of The Loss But By Gratitude For What Preceded The Loss.

That Was Interesting, Riding In The Trunk," Milo Said, "but I Wouldn't Want To Do It Again.

Some Lives, Conducted With Grace, Are Beautiful Arcs Bridging This World To Eternity.

Writing A Novel Is Like Making Love, But It's Also Like Having A Tooth Pulled. Pleasure And Pain. Sometimes It's Like Making Love While Having A Tooth Pulled.

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

Even In The Darkest Moments, Light Exists If You Have Faith To See It.

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

Don't Tell Me What's Necessary, You Presumptupus Pup. What's Necessary Is Whatever I Wish To Do, Regardless Of How Unnecessary It Might Be.

Y'all Take Care Of Yourself Now... Strange And Interesting Friends Are Hard To Find.

If Your Work Is Deathwork, One Weapon Is Not Enough, Just As A Plumber Would Not Answer An Urgent Service Call With A Single Wrench.

Loss Is The Hardest Thing, I Said. But It's Also The Teacher That's The Most Difficult To Ignore.

Grief Is A Healthy Emotion, And It's Healthy To Embrace It. By Accepting Loss, We Clarify Our Values And The Meaning Of Our Lives.

Everything Happens For A Reason

Sometimes There Is No Darker Place Than Our Thoughts, The Moonless Midnight Of The Mind.

I Have Advice For New Writers, First Of All, At Any Time In The History Of Publishing In My Experience, There Will Be Endless Number People Telling You That You Can't Do What You Are Trying To Do. You Won't Succeed, There's Something Else You Should Be Doing.

The World Needed A Little Evil, So Good Had Something To Compare Itself To, But You Couldn't Let It Think It Had The Right-of-way On The Road And An Invitation To Dinner.

Each Reader Needs To Bring His Or Her Own Mind And Heart To The Text.

She Says What Holds Their Marriage Together Is That She Feels Too Damn Sorry For Him To Ask For A Divorce.

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