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If Edgar Allan Poe Were Alive Today, His Agent Would Be Constantly Slapping Him Upside The Head With Tightly Rolled Copies Of His Brilliant Short Stories And Novelettes, Yelling, 'full-length Novels, You Moron! Pay Attention! What's The Matter With You -- Are You Shooting Heroin Or Something? Write For The Market! No More Of This Midlength 'fall Of The House Of Usher' Crap

-Dean Koontz

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If Edgar Allan Poe

Dean Koontz

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If Edgar Allan Poe Were Alive Today, His Agent Would Be Constantly Slapping Him Upside The Head With Tightly Rolled Copies Of His Brilliant Short Stories And Novelettes, Yelling, 'full-length Novels, You Moron! Pay Attention! What's The Matter With You -- Are You Shooting Heroin Or Something? Write For The Market! No More Of This Midlength 'fall Of The House Of Usher' Crap

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Too Many Dogs Continue To Be Abused And Abandond - One Is Too Many - And People Continue To Kill People For Money And Envy And No Reason At All. Bad People Succeed And Good People Fail, But That's Not The End Of The Story. Miracles Happen That Nobody Sees, And Among Us Walk Heroes Who Are Never Recognised, And People Live In Loneliness Because They Cannot Believe They Are Loved

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

...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.

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.

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.

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.

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

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.

None Of Us Can Ever Save Himself; We Are The Instruments Of One Another’s Salvation, And Only By The Hope That We Give To Others Do We Lift Ourselves Out Of The Darkness Into Light.

I Was Looking Forward To Having A Halo. It Would Make Such A Convenient Reading Lamp.

Writing Isn't A Source Of Pain. It's Psychic Chemotherapy. It Reduces Your Psychological Tumors And Relieves Your Pain.

There Are No Explanations For Human Evil. Only Excuses.

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.

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

Happiness Is A Choice

Even In The Darkest Moments, Light Exists If You Have The Faith To See It. Fear Is A Poison Produced By The Mind, And Courage Is The Antidote Stored Always In The Soul. In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

We May Lack Riches, But The Greatest Fortune Is What Lies In Our Hearts.

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.

In A Book, Even The Real Bastards Can't Hurt You. And You Can Never Loose A Friend You Make In A Book. When You Get To A Sad Part, No One's There To See You Cry. Or Wonder Why You Don't Cry When You Should.

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.

If Dogs Talked, One Of Them Would Be President By Now. Everybody Likes Dogs.

In The Belly Of Leviathan ... One Can Either Despair And Perish, Or Be Cheerful And Persevere.

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

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.

When We Don't Allow Ourselves To Hope, We Don't Allow Ourselves To Have Purpose. Without Purpose, Without Meaning, Life Is Dark. We've No Light Within, And We're Just Living To Die.

...i Felt Fear Enter The Halls Of My Mind, But I Didn't Give It The Keys To Every Room.

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.

Inaction Counted As A Choice.

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.

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.

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.

No Matter How Close We Are To Another Person, Few Human Relationships Are As Free From Strife, Disagreement, And Frustration As Is The Relationship You Have With A Good Dog. Few Human Beings Give Of Themselves To Another As A Dog Gives Of Itself. I Also Suspect That We Cherish Dogs Because Their Unblemished Souls Make Us Wish - Consciously Or Unconsciously - That We Were As Innocent As They Are, And Make Us Yearn For A Place Where Innocence Is Universal And Where The Meanness, The Betrayals, And The Cruelties Of This World Are Unknown.

The Process, Not The Final Achievement, Is What It's All About.

Are You Prepared For The First Wound?

Evil Is No Faceless Stranger, Living In A Distant Neighborhood. Evil Has A Wholesome, Hometown Face, With Merry Eyes And An Open Smile. Evil Walks Among Us, Wearing A Mask Which Looks Like All Our Faces.

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

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

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 Never Have Lunch Because It Makes Me Foggy-headed.

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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.

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

One Of The Underlying Things I Like To Do In Books, Is Just Say, Stop And Look At This For A Moment. Not That You've Got To Believe That Jesus Was Real, Or Not To Believe In God, But The Belief That It Isn't Just Happenstance.

Fire, Ice, Asteroids And Pole Shifts Are Bogeymen With Which We Distract Ourselves From The Real Threat Of Our Time. In An Age When Everyone Invents His Own Truth, There Is No Community, Only Factions. Without Community, There Can Be No Consensus To Resist The Greedy, The Envious, The Power-mad Narcissists Who Seize Control And Turn The Institutions Of Civilization Into A Series Of Doom Machines.

I Have Avoided Becoming Stale By Putting A Little Water On The Plate, Lying On The Plate, And Having Myself Refreshed In A Toaster Oven For 23 Minutes Once Every Month.

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.

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

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.

What Most People Find Important, You Do Not. This Is Wisdom. To What You Believe Is Important, You Are Ready To Give Your Mind, Heart, And Soul. This Is Grace.

If Edgar Allan Poe Were Alive Today, His Agent Would Be Constantly Slapping Him Upside The Head With Tightly Rolled Copies Of His Brilliant Short Stories And Novelettes, Yelling, 'full-length Novels, You Moron! Pay Attention! What's The Matter With You -- Are You Shooting Heroin Or Something? Write For The Market! No More Of This Midlength 'fall Of The House Of Usher' Crap

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

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.

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.

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

Appearances Are Not Reality; But They Often Can Be A Convincing Alternative To It. You Can Control Appearances Most Of The Time, But Facts Are What They Are. When The Facts Are Too Sharp, You Can Craft A Cheerful Version Of The Situation And Cover The Facts The Way That You Can Covered A Battered Old Four-slice Toaster With A Knitted Cozy Featuring Images Of Kittens.

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.

In A Crunch A Man's Reputation Never Counts For As Much As It Ought To.

All I Asked Was That I Be Spared Surprises, Although, In This World Of Six Billion Souls, All Acting With Free Will And Too Many With Audacity, Surprises Are Inevitable, Too Few Of Them Are The Kind That Make You Smile And That Lift Your Heart.

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.

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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

That Was One Of The Most Fundamental And Sacred Duties Good Friends And Families Performed For One Another! They Tended The Flame Of Memory, So No One’s Death Meant An Immediate Vanishment From The World; In Some Sense The Deceased Would Live On After Their Passing, At Least As Long As Those Who Loved Them Lived. Such Memories Were An Essential Weapon Against The Chaos Of Life And Death, A Way To Ensure Some Continuity From Generation To Generation, An Order Of Endorsement And Meaning.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If One's Friends Do Not Openly Laugh At Him, They Are Not In Fact His Friends.

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

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

In Spite Of Where We Were, How We Had Gotten Here And Why We Had Come, I Felt That At This Moment Of Our Lives, This Place Was Exactly Where We Belonged. We Were Not Drifting But Rising, Rising Toward Something Right And Of Significance.

A Fanatic Is A Nut Who Has Something To Believe In.

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.

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.

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

Or Maybe They Were Just Doing It For Fun. A Lark. Their Religion Is Tolerant Of Extreme Forms Of Recreation. Boys Will Be Boys, After All, And Sociopathic Boys Will Be Sociopathic.

Love And Sausage Are Alike. Can Never Have Enough Of Either.

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.

And The Funny Thing Was If You Made The Best Of It, If You Smiled Through Every Storm, The Bad Things Were Never As Terrible As You Expected Them To Be, And The Good Things Were Better Than Anything You Could Have Wished For Yourself.

You Can't Always Win Arguments As A Writer, But You Have To Just Go Ahead And Say, Well, I'm Doing It That Way Anyway.

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

Infinite Universe

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

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

The World Is Full Of Broken People. Splints, Casts, Miracle Drugs, And Time Can't Mend Fractured Hearts, Wounded Hearts, Wounded Minds, Torn Spirits.

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

Dogs Are One Of Those Things That Make You Happy And Make You Wonder.

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.

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.

Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

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.

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

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.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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 Have A Responsibility To Stand Watch Over One Another, We Are Watchers, All Of Us, Watchers, Guarding Against The Darkness.

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

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.

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.

In My Books, I Never Portray Violence As A Reasonable Solution To A Problem. If The Lead Characters In The Story Are Driven To It, It's At The Extreme End Of Their Experience.

Life's Mysterious, Strange, And Full Of Wonders - And Only A Fool Withdraws From It Willingly And Lets It Pass Him By.

Life Is A Train Ride, And At The Many Stations Along The Route, People Important To Us Debark, Never To Get Aboard Again, Until By The End Of The Journey, We Sit In A Passenger Car Where Most Of The Seats Are Empty.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Loyal Companions Are An Unequaled Grace, Stanching Fear Before It Bleeds You Numb, A Reliable Antidote For Creeping Despair.

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

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.

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.

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

You Have To Stop Worrying About Looking Foolish, 'cause Fear Of Being Humiliated Really Limits You.

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

In This World Only The Paranoid Survive.

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.

Pure, Hard-core Liberals Believe In A Superior Race. They Think They're It. They Believe They're More Intelligent Than The General Run Of Mankind, Better Suited Than The Little People Are To Manage The Little People's Lives. They Think They Have The One True Vision, The Ability To Solve All The Moral Dilemmas Of The Century. They Prefer Big Government Because That Is The First Step To Totalitarianism, Toward Unquestioned Rule By The Elite. And Of Course They See Themselves As The Elite.

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

When You Have Dogs, You Witness Their Uncomplaining Acceptance Of Suffering, Their Bright Desire To Make The Most Of Life In Spite Of The Limitations Of Age And Disease, Their Calm Awareness Of The Approaching End When Their Final Hours Come. They Accept Death With A Grace That I Hope I Will One Day Be Brave Enough To Muster.

Wealth Is Power, And Power Is The Only Thing About Which Contemporary Culture Cares.

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

In My Personal Life, I'm A Comic Novel. But Then, So Are We All, Because We're Human Beings.

Some People Think Only Intellect Counts: Knowing How To Solve Problems, Knowing How To Get By, Knowing How To Identify An Advantage And Seize It. But The Functions Of Intellect Are Insufficient Without Courage, Love, Friendship, Compassion, And Empathy.

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.

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.

When I'm Working On A Novel, I Work 70-hour Weeks.

Recognizing The Structure Of Your Psychology Doesn't Mean That You Can Easily Rebuild It.

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'm Small, I'm Young - And I'm So Different. You've Always Respected That Difference, And You've Always Trusted It. Trust Me Now. There's A Reason I Am The Way I Am, And There's A Reason I Was Born To You. There's Always A Reason. We Belong Together.

Maybe There's Nothing Impossible Tonight. We're Down The Hole To Wonderland, And No White Rabbit To Guide Us." If I Remember Correctly, The White Rabbit Was An Unreliable Guide, Anyway.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Kind Of Build A Novel The Way Marine Polyps Build A Coral Reef, It's Millions And Millions Of Little Precarious Bodies Stacked On One Another. And In My Case, That's Thousands Of Minutes I Go Through To Get From One Scene To The Next And Build It That Way.

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.

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

Dare We Linger, Dare We Skate? Dare We Laugh Or Celebrate, Knowing We May Strain The Ice? Preserve The Ice At Any Price?

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.

Humanity Is A Parade Of Fools, And I Am At The Front Of It, Twirling A Baton.

I Try Not To Spend Too Much Time On Partisan Politics. Life's Too Short For That. I Don't Really Believe That There Have Been Many Human Problems Solved By Politics.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Human Imagination May Be The Most Elastic Thing In The Universe, Stretching To Encompass The Millions Of Dreams That In Centuries Of Relectless Struggle Built Modern Civilization, To Entertain The Endless Doubts That Hamper Every Human Enterprise, And To Conceive The Vast Menagerie Of Boogeymen That Trouble Every Human Heart.

Pain Can Be Endured And Defeated Only If It Is Embraced. Denied Or Feared, It Grows In Perception If Not In Reality. The Best Response To Terror Is Righteous Anger, Confidence In Ultimate Justice, A Refusal To Be Intimidated.

We Yearn For Tomorrow And The Progress That It Represents. But Yesterday Was Once Tomorrow, And Where Was Progress In It? Or We Yearn For Yesterday, For What Was Or What Might Have Been. But As We Are Yearning, The Present Is Becoming The Past, So The Past Is Nothing But Our Yearning For Second Chances.

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.

The World Howls For Social Justice, But When It Comes To Social Responsibility, You Sometimes Cant Even Hear Crickets Chirping.

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

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

Always, The Eye Sees More Than The Mind Can Comprehend, And We Go Through Life Self-blinded To Much That Lies Before Us. We Want A Simple World, But We Live In A Magnificently Complex One, And Rather Than Open Ourselves To It, We Perceive The World Through Filters That Make It Less Daunting.

Human Cruelty And Treachery Surpassed All Understanding. There Were No Answers. Only Excuses.

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

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

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.

Like All Of Us In This Storm Between Birth And Death, I Can Wreak No Great Changes On The World, Only Small Changes For The Better, I Hope, In The Lives Of Those I Love.

A Man Begins Dying At The Moment Of His Birth. Most People Live In Denial Of Death's Patient Courtship Until, Late In Life And Deep In Sickness, They Become Aware Of Him Sitting Bedside.

I Have A Sofa On Which I Never Nap, Big Windows With An Ocean View That I Rarely See Because I Keep The Pleated Shades Down At All Times While Working. I Know I'm A Potential Slacker, So I Don't Tempt Myself.

Although Charismatic, James Dean Is No Harrison Ford. In The Majority Of His Movies, Sooner Or Later He Got The Crap Beaten Out Of Him.

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.

One Of The Greatest Gifts We Receive From Dogs Is The Tenderness They Evoke In Us. The Disappointments Of Life, The Injustices, The Battering Events That Are Beyond Our Control, And The Betrayals We Endure, From Those We Befriended And Loved, Can Make Us Cynical And Turn Our Hearts Into Flint – On Which Only The Matches Of Anger And Bitterness Can Be Struck Into Flame. By Their Delight In Being With Us, The Reliable Sunniness Of Their Disposition, The Joy They Bring To Playtime, The Curiosity With Which They Embrace Each New Experience, Dogs Can Melt Cynicism,and Sweeten The Bitter Heart.

The Word Impossible Contains The Word Possible' What's That-- Some Zen Thing?' I Think Star Trek. Mr. Spock.

What We Do As A Society Is Seek Simple Answers.

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

Lies Hurt People; Imagination Makes Life More Fun.

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.

Then What Are You? An Electronic Hannibal Lector? You Can't Eat My Liver With Fava Beans Through A Modem, You Know.

In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

When Tempest Tossed, Embrace Chaos

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

People Couldn't Bear To Go On Living If They Faced Every Cold Truth About Themselves.

Every Day We Make Our Way Through A Moral Forest, Along Pathways Ever Branching. Often We Get Lost. When The Array Of Paths Before Us Is So Perplexing That We Can't Make A Choice, Or Won't, We Can Hope That We Will Be Given A Sign To Guide Us. A Reliance On Signs, However, Can Lead To The Evasion Of All Moral Obligations, And Thus Earn A Terrible Judgment.

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

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.

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

Little Mouse, You Were So Quick, So Bright, So Sweet, So Full Of Life. And You Still Are Everything You Were Then. None Of It’s Lost Forever. All That Promise, All That Hope, That Love And Goodness—it’s Still Inside You. No One Can Take The Gifts God Gave You. Only You.

Truth Is Always Stranger Than Fiction. We Craft Fiction To Match Our Sense Of How Things Ought To Be, But Truth Cannot Be Crafted. Truth Is, And Truth Has A Way Of Astonishing Us To Our Knees. Reminding Us, That The Universe Does Not Exist To Fulfill Our Expectations. Because We Are Imperfect Beings Who Are Self-blinded To The Truth Of The World’s Stunning Complexity, We Shave Reality To Paper Thin Theories And Ideologies That We Can Easily Grasp – And We Call Them Truths. But The Truth Of A Sea In All It’s Immensity Cannot Be Embodied In One Tidewashed Pebble.

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

Strangely Enough, For Many Many Years I Didn't Talk About My Childhood And Then When I Did I Got A Ton Of Mail - Literally Within A Year I Got A Couple Of Thousand Letters From People Who'd Had A Worse Childhood, A Similar Childhood, A Less-bad Childhood, And The Question That Was Most Often Posed To Me In Those Letters Was: How Did You Get Past The Trauma Of Being Raised By A Violent Alcoholic?

If Something In Your Writing Gives Support To People In Their Lives, That’s More Than Just Entertainment-w Hich Is What We Writers All Struggle To Do, To Touch People.

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

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.

What Sucks The Worst Is . . . This World Was A Gift To Us, And We Broke It, And Part Of The Deal Is That If We Want Things Right, We Have To Fix It Ourselves. But We Can't. We Try, But We Can't.

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

Death Lies Dormant In Each Of Us And Will Bloom In Time.

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.

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.

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.

We Are All The Walking Wounded In A World That Is A War Zone. Everything We Love Will Be Taken From Us, Everything, Last Of All Life Itself. Yet Everywhere I Look, I Find Great Beauty In This Battlefield, And Grace And The Promise Of Joy.

There's Lots Of Law These Days, But Not Much Justice. Celebrities Murder Their Wives And Go Free. A Mother Kills Her Children, And The News People On Tv Say She's The Victim And Want You To Send Money To Her Lawyers. When Everything's Upside Down Like This, What Fool Just Sits Back And Thinks Justice Will Prevail?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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