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Home Was Not A Perfect Place. But It Was The Only Home They Had And They Could Hope To Make It Better.
-Dean Koontz
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Home Was Not A

Dean Koontz
...
Home Was Not A Perfect Place. But It Was The Only Home They Had And They Could Hope To Make It Better.

Understanding the Quote: "home was not a perfect place. but it was the only home..."

This quote by Dean Koontz reflects deeply on the theme of home. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Home, Perfect, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Dean Koontz interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is celebrated for insightful thoughts on home and perfect. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Games
Smell
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.
Class
Serious
Formal
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.
Love
Betrayal
Kindness
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.
True Evil
Ideas
Literature
I Can Do What I Need To Do. I Can Get Where I Want To Go, No Matter How Hard It Is.
Needs
Want
Matter
I Survive By Finding The Sweet Spot Between Reason And Unreason, Between The Rational And Irrational.
Sweet
Balance
Reason
The Things We Worry About The Most Are Never The Things That Bite Us. The Sharpest Teeth Always Take Their Nip Of Us When We Are Looking The Other Way.
Worry
Teeth
Way
Life Packed A Clever One-two Punch: Cruelty And Absurdity.
Life
Clever
Two
Bunny Slippers Remind Me Of Who I Am.you Can't Get A Swelled Head If You Wear Bunny Slippers. You Can't Lose Your Sense Of Perspective And Start Acting Like A Star Or A Rich Lady If You Keep On Wearing Bunny Slippers. Besides, Bunny Slippers Give Me Confidence Because They're So Jaunty. They Make A Statement; They Say, 'nothing The World Does To Me Can Ever Get Me So Far Down That I Can't Be Silly And Frivolous.
Stars
Silly
Who I Am
In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.
Lying
Triumph
Seeds
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.
Book
Kids
House
Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.
Responsibility
Responsibility To Others
Sense Of Responsibility
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.
Real
Scotch
Important
After Once Having Made The Mistake Of Watching Television News, I Had Worried For A While About An Asteroid Hitting The Earth And Wiping Out Human Civilization. The Anchorwoman Had Said It Was Not Merely Possible But Probable. At The End Of The Report, She Smiled.
Mistake
Civilization
Wiping Out
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.
Dad
Father
Alcohol
A Great Deal Of Phenomenal Experience Has Fostered In Me A Flexibility Of The Mind And Imagination That Some Might Call Madness
Imagination
Mind
Might
Some People Misunderstand Evil And Believe It Will Relent, And Because Their Misplaced Hope Inspires Dark Hearts To Dream Darker Dreams, They Are The Fathers And Mothers Of All Wars. Evil Does Not Relent; It Must Be Defeated. And Even When Defeated, Uprooted, And Purified By Fire, Evil Leaves Behind A Seed That Will One Day Germinate And, In Blooming, Again Be Misunderstood.
Mother
Dream
Father
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.
Believe
Exercise
Quality
I Like To Deal With Every Aspect Of Our Condition, And That Means Terror And Humor In Equal Mix. Some Books Have More Room For Humor Than Others.
Book
Humor
Mean
Every Writer Has His Own Voice. Other Than That I'm Always Trying To Do Change-ups And Publishers Haven't Always Been Happy About That.
Voice
Always Trying
Havens
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.
Addiction
Twelve
Needs
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.
House
Architecture
Ghost
Life, Stormy Says, Is Not About How Fast You Run Or Even With What Degree Of Grace. It's About Perseverance, About Staying On Your Feet And Slogging Forward No Matter What.
Running
Perseverance
Feet
I Don't Find Slashing And Blood Flying Everywhere To Be Scary. I Just Find It Repulsive.
Halloween
Blood
Scary
When New Hopes Fail, Old Hopes Return In The Endless Cycle Of Desperation.
Return
Failing
Desperation
Human Cruelty And Treachery Surpassed All Understanding. There Were No Answers. Only Excuses.
Understanding
Answers
Excuse
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.
Reality
Imagination
Fabric
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.
Two
Choices
Presidential
Despair Is Good. Despair Can Be The Nadir Of One Life And The Starting Point Of An Ascent Into Another, Better One.
Despair
Nadir
Ascent
That's All That Matters, Really: That We Can Make Each Other Feel Better.
Feel Better
Matter
Feels
...like A Scene From The Swamps Of Louisiana Or The Mind Of Poe On Opium.
Mind
Louisiana
Swamps
If One's Friends Do Not Openly Laugh At Him, They Are Not In Fact His Friends.
Laughing
Facts
Odd Thomas
It Is Music That Speaks To The Deepest Reaches Of Your Soul, And You Are Lifted Higher, Ever Higher, By The Adagio, In My Opinion More So Even Than In Any Of The Masses That Beethoven Composed.
Soul
Opinion
Speak
A Good Dog Is One Of The Best Things Of All To Be.
Dog
Good Dog
Best Things
The Dead Are Merely The Countrymen Of My Future.
Fear
My Future
Countrymen
Some Argued That The Youth Of Today Were Poorly Educated And Insufficiently Industrious, But One Of Them Had Sought To Validate His Generation By Spending Considerable Time And Effort Chiseling An Obscene Word In The Concrete Picnic Table, And He Had Spelled It Correctly.
Youth Of Today
Effort
Generations
Loneliness Comes In Two Basic Varieties. When It Results From A Desire For Solitude, Loneliness Is A Door We Close Against The World. When The World Instead Rejects Us, Loneliness Is An Open Door, Unused.
Loneliness
Doors
Two
A Silent Dark...as Black As A Moonless Lake, As A Ravine's Wings, Darkness There And Nothing More, Merely This And Nothing More.
Dark
Lakes
Wings
Pain Is A Gift. Humanity, Without Pain, Would Know Neither Fear Nor Pity.
Pain
Humanity
Pity
When I'm Working On A Novel, I Work 70-hour Weeks.
Writing
Week
Hours
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.
Vocabulary
Going Away
Trying
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.
People
Way
Life Is
Hope Is The Destination That We Seek. Love Is The Road That Leads To Hope. Courage Is The Motor That Drives Us. We Travel Out Of Darkness Into Faith.
Love
Faith
Darkness
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.
Stars
Moon
Night
Perseverance Is Impossible If We Don't Permit Ourselves To Hope.
Encouraging
Perseverance
Impossible
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.
True Friend
Fun
Sacrifice
If She Possessed Any Memory Whatsoever Of The Days When She'd Been Whole, Her Shattered Recollections Were Scattered Across The Darkscape Of Her Mind In Fragments So Minuscule That She Could No More Easily Piece Them Together Than She Could Gather From The Beach All The Tiny Chips Of Broken Seashells, Worn To Polished Flakes By Ages Of Relentless Tides, And Reassemble Them Into Their Original Architectures.
Beach
Memories
Broken
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.
People
Mutants
Pity
The Word Impossible Contains The Word Possible' What's That-- Some Zen Thing?' I Think Star Trek. Mr. Spock.
Stars
Thinking
Impossible
But Once An Idea For A Novel Seizes A Writer...well, It’s Like An Inner Fire That At First Warms You And Makes You Feel Good But Then Begins To Eat You Alive, Burn You Up From Within. You Can’t Just Walk Away From The Fire; It Keeps Burning. The Only Way To Put It Out Is To Write The Book.
Book
Writing
Fire
...i Felt Fear Enter The Halls Of My Mind, But I Didn't Give It The Keys To Every Room.
Keys
Giving
Mind
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.
Writing
Interesting
Starting Over
Sometimes, Life Seems To Have A Higher Meaning. Events Unfold In Uncanny Sequences. Long-forgotten Acquaintances Turn Up With News That Changes Lives. A Stranger Appears And Speaks A Few Words Of Wisdom, Solving A Previously Insoluble Problem, Or Something In A Recent Dream Transpires In Reality. Suddenly The Existence Of God Seems Confirmed.
Dream
Life Changing
Reality
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
Humility
Self
Age
Love Was A Sacred Garment, Woven Of A Fabric So Thin That It Could Not Be Seen, Yet So Strong That Even Mighty Death Could Not Tear It, A Garment That Could Not Be Frayed By Use, That Brought Warmth Into What Would Otherwise Be An Intolerable, Cold World- But At Times Love Could Also Be As Heavy As Chain Mail. Bearing The Burden Of Love, On Those Occasions When It Was A Solemn Weight, Made It More Precious When, In Better Times, It Caught The Wind In Sleeves Like Wings, And Lifted You.
Strong
Wind
Wings
Whiskers Of The Cat, Webbed Toes On My Swimming Dog; God Is In The Details.
Dog
Cat
Swimming
All I Ask Of Fate Is That The People She Hurls Into My Life, Whether They Are Evil Or Good, Or Morally Bipolar, Should Be Amusing To One Degree Or Another.... The Problem Is Finding Smile-inducing Evil People, Because The Evil Are The Most Humorless, Though In The Movies They Frequently Get Some Of The Best Lines.
Fate
Evil People
Bipolar
No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.
Heart
Should
Feels
Dogs Are One Of Those Things That Make You Happy And Make You Wonder.
Dog
Wonder
Make You Happy
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.
Attitude
Real
Character
For Some, The Past Is A Chain, Each Day A Link, Raveling Backward To One Ringbolt Or Another, In One Dark Place Or Another, And Tomorrow Is A Slave To Yesterday.
Dark
Past
Yesterday
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.
Grief
Sorrow
Might
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.
Ideas
Two
Numbers
Anger Is A Violent Emotion, Vindictive, And As Dangerous To He Who Is Driven By It As To Anyone On Whom It Is Turned.
Anger
Emotion
Violent
Life's Mysterious, Strange, And Full Of Wonders - And Only A Fool Withdraws From It Willingly And Lets It Pass Him By.
Fool
Strange
Mysterious
We Live In God's Amusement Park.
Amusement
Parks
Amusement Parks
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.
Writing
Publicity
Sometimes
Literary Fiction, As A Strict Genre, Is All But Dead. Meanwhile, Most Genres Flourish.
Genre Is
Fiction
Genre
The Process, Not The Final Achievement, Is What It's All About.
Achievement
Finals
Process
To Many People, Free Will Is A License To Rebel Not Against What Is Unjust Or Hard In Life But Against What Is Best For Them And True.
People
Rebel
Unjust
The Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.
Rain
Night
Cities
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.
Good Day
Long Ago
Careers
Dare We Linger, Dare We Skate? Dare We Laugh Or Celebrate, Knowing We May Strain The Ice? Preserve The Ice At Any Price?
Ice
Knowing
Laughing
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