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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?

-Dean Koontz

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Grapes Are Juicy. Strawberries.

Dean Koontz

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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?

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Doubt Is Poison. It Leads To A Loss Of Faith In Yourself, And In All That's Good And True.

Evil Was Coming. I Wondered Whose Face It Would Be Wearing.

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

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.

Not All Or Even Most Suffering Is At The Hands Of Fate; It Befalls Us At Our Invitation.

Civilization Rests On The Fact That Most People Do The Right Thing Most Of The Time.

He Once Told Me That An August Evening Was "as Hot As Three Toads In A Cuisinart," A Comparison That Left Me Blinking Two Days Later.

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

Being Polite Is Not Only The Right Way To Respond To People But Also The Easiest. Life Is So Filled With Unavoidable Conflict That I See No Reason To Promote More Confrontations.

Lies Hurt People; Imagination Makes Life More Fun.

One Man's Idea Of Perfect Order Is Another Man's Chaos.

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The Functions Of Intellect Are Insufficient Without Courage, Love, Friendship, Compassion And Empathy.

Friendship Love

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.

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

I'm No More A Wonder Than Anyone. And That's What Makes The World Magical. Every Baby's A Seed Of Wonder - That Gets Watered Or It Doesn't.

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.

We Are Not, However, A Species That Can Choose The Baggage With Which We Must Travel. In Spite Of Our Best Intentions, We Always Find That We Have Brought Along A Suitcase Or Two Of Darkness And Despair.

When I'm In The Middle Of A Book It Can Go Up From There. When You're Putting In Those Hours, The Real World Kind Of Fades And The World You're Creating Becomes Almost More Real To You Than The Outside World.

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

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.

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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A Plot Without Action Is Like Pasta Without Garlic, Like Dolly Parton Without Cleavage, And Like A Writer Without His Similes.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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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.

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

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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

I Am The One, And I See All. But The Blind Man In Apartment 1-a Is Blind In Many Ways, As Are All Human Beings, Even Those With Functioning Eyes. They Are Blind To Their Folly, To Their Ignorance, To Their History, To The Future That They Will Make For Themselves. A Future Born Of Self-loathing.

Only Time Conquers Time And Its Burdens.

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

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

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

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In The End, It's All About Perseverance.

As Individuals, As Families, As Neighbors, As Members Of One Community, People Of All Races And Political Views Are Usually Decent, Kind, Compassionate. But In Large Corporations Or Governments, When Great Power Accumulates In Their Hands, Some Become Monsters Even With Good Intentions.

When Tempest Tossed, Embrace Chaos

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Living In The Modern Age, Death For Virtue Is The Wage. So It Seems In Darker Hours. Evil Wins, Kindness Cowers. Ruled By Violence And Vice We All Stand Upon Thin Ice. Are We Brave Or Are We Mice, Here Upon Such Thin, Thin Ice? Dare We Linger, Dare We Skate? Dare We Laugh Or Celebrate, Knowing We May Strain The Ice? Preserve The Ice At Any Price?

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.

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.

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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.

Petting, Scratching, And Cuddling A Dog Could Be As Soothing To The Mind And Heart As Deep Meditation And Almost As Good For The Soul As Prayer.

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

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

On The Road That I Have Taken, One Day Walking I Awaken, Amazed To See Where I've Come, Where I'm Going, Where I'm From.

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

When A Liar Became Too Skilled At Deception, He Could Lose The Ability To Discern Truth, And Could Himself Be More Easily Deceived.

She Lived For Others, Her Heart Tuned To Their Anguish And Their Needs.

Atlas Isn't Carrying The World On His Shoulders, No Giant Muscular Hulk With A Sense Of Responsibility; The World Is Balanced On A Pyramid Of Clowns, And They Are Always Tooting Horns And Wobbling And Goosing Each Other.

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.

In This Uncertain Space Between Birth And Death, Especially Here At The End Of The World In Moonlight Bay, We Need Hope As Surely As We Need Food And Water, Love And Friendship.

Love And Friendship

I Fell In Love With Her For Her Sense Of Humour. If She Ever Lost Her Sense Of Humour, I Would Have To Dump Her. Then I'd Kill Myself Because I Couldn't Live Without Her.

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.

I Know It's Hard Being A Single Mother Baby, He Said, But We're Talking Fundamentals Here. Homemade Cookies Are One Of The Best Parts Of Christmas. It's An Absolute Fundamental.

Much Of Her Life Had Been Lived Like A Balancing Act On A Spearpoint Fence, And On A Particularly Difficult Night When She Was Twelve, She Had Decided That Instinct Was, In Fact, The Quiet Voice Of God. Prayers Did Receive Replies, But You Had To Listen Closely And Believe In The Answer. At Twelve, She Wrote In Her Diary: "god Doesn't Shout; He Whispers, And In The Whisper Is The Way.

To A Predator, Fear Indicates Weakness.

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Because People See Violence On The Movie Screen, They're Not Going To Go Out And Hold Up A Liquor Store And Kill Somebody. It Really Doesn't Correlate.

Narcissists Are Everywhere In This Ripe Age Of Self-love, Which Amazes Me Because So Much In Life Would Seem To Foster Humility. Each Of Us Is A Potential Source Of Foolishness, Each Of Us Must Endure The Consequences Of The Foolishness Of Others, And In Addition To All Of That, Nature Frequently Works To Impress Upon Us Our Absurdity And Thereby Remind Us That We Are Not The Masters Of The Universe That We Like To Suppose We Are. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse By Dean Koontz Pg 62 Chapter 8

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

Here In The Summer Desert, Winter Found My Blood

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

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Like Children, Dogs Want Discipline And Are Most Secure When They Have Rules To Live By. The Happiest Dogs Are Those With Gentle Masters Who Quietly But Firmly Demand Respect.

Rules To Live By

...he Was Part Of A Family Whether He Wanted To Be Or Not, The Family Of Humanity, More Often Than Not A Frustrating And Contentious Clan, Flawed And Often Deeply Confused, But Also Periodically Noble And Admirable, With A Common Destiny That Every Member Shared.

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

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.

All But Universally, Human Architecture Values Front Elevations Over Back Entrances, Public Spaces Over Private. Danny Jessup Says That This Aspect Of Architecture Is Also A Reflection Of Human Nature, That Most People Care More About Their Appearance Than They Do About Their Souls.

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.

When I Am Battered And Oppressed By The World That Humanity Has Made - Which Is Difference From The World That Is Was Given - My Primary Defense, My Consolation, Is The Absurdity Of That World

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.

Nearly Everything That Was Fun, Of Course, Was Also A Little Dangerous: Riding Roller Coasters, Skydiving, Gambling, Sex.

What Popped Up More Than That Was The Realization That I Made As An Adult That The World Is This Incredibly Complex, Layered, And Mysterious Place And If You Stop And Think About It The Human Cell Is Literally More Complex Than A Fleet Of 747s.

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?

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 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.

Another Way To Be Awakened By The Beauty And Complexity Of The Word Is To Get A Dog. Small Things Like A Plant That I Had Passed A Thousand Time And Never Given A Second Thought To. But The Dog Is Curious. And The Dog Stops And Wants To Smell This And Smell That. And The Dog Makes You Look And Focus And Take The Time.

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

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.

Authors Of So-called 'literary' Fiction Insist That Action, Like Plot, Is Vulgar And Unworthy Of A True Artist. Don't Pay Any Attention To Misguided Advice Of That Sort. If You Do, You Will Very Likely Starve Trying To Live On Your Writing Income. Besides, The Only Writers Who Survive The Ages Are Those Who Understand The Need For Action In A Novel.

You Can Con God And Get Away With It, Granny Said, If You Do So With Charm And Wit. If You Live Your Life With Imagination And Verve, God Will Play Along Just To See What Outrageously Entertaining Thing You'll Do Next.

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.

There Is Nothing Fatherly About Time And What It Does To Us, Either.

I Believe In The Possibility Of Miracles But, More To The Point, I Believe In Our Need For Them.

The Saddest Thing In The World Was That Human Beings, For All Their Ardent Striving And Desire, Could Never Achieve Physical, Emotional, Or Intellectual Perfection. The Species Was Doomed To Imperfection; It Thrashed Forever In Despair Or Denial Of That Fact.

In This Age, Lies Were The Universal Lubricant Of The Culture. A Love Of Truth And Commitment To It Were Seldom Rewarded And Were Often Punished.

Houses Are Not Haunted. We Are Haunted, And Regardless Of The Architecture With Which We Surround Ourselves, Our Ghosts Stay With Us Until We Ourselves Are Ghosts.

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.

In A Clutch Or A Corner, I Tend To Make A Weapon Out Of What Is Near At Hand. That Can Be Anything From A Crowbar To A Cat, Though If I Had A Choice, I Would Prefer An Angry Cat, Which I Have Found To Be More Effective Than A Crowbar. Although Weaponless, I Left The House By The Back Door, With Two Chocolate-pumpkin Cookies. It's A Tough World Out There, And A Man Has To Armor Himself Against It However He Can. ~odd Thomas

Your Mind Always Does Worse Things Than People Can Show In A Movie.

I Would Not Cry. I Do Not Cry. How Bitter Do You Risk Becoming By Swallowing Too Many Tears?

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

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

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.

What Does Worry Accomplish Except To Breed More Worry?

I Need Those Nukes, The Chief Said. I Need Them, I Need Them Right Now. I Don't Want To Be An Enabler, Sir. I'd Rather Get You Into A Twelve Step Program To Help You Break This Addiction.

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

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