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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.

-Dean Koontz

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Maybe When All Was

Dean Koontz

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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.

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Odd: I Wish I Could Believe In Reincarnation. Chief Porter: Not Me. Once Down The Track Is Enough Of A Test. Pass Me Or Fail Me, Dear Lord, But Don't Make Me Go Through High School Again. Odd: If There's Something We Want So Bad In This Life But We Can't Have It, Maybe We Could Get It The Next Time Around. Chief Porter: Or Maybe Not Getting It, Accepting Less Without Bitterness And Being Grateful For What We Have Is A Part Of What We're Here To Learn.

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

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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.

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.

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

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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.

No One Can Genuinely Love The World, Which Is Too Large To Love Entire. To Love All The World At Once Is Pretense Or Dangerous Self-delusion. Loving The World Is Like Loving The Idea Of Love, Which Is Perilous Because, Feeling Virtuous About This Grand Affection, You Are Freed From The Struggles And The Duties That Come With Loving People As Individuals.

Between Birth And Burial, We Find Ourselves In A Comedy Of Mysteries. If You Don't Think Life Is Mysterious, If You Believe You Have It All Mapped Out, You Aren't Paying Attention Or You've Anesthetized Yourself With Booze Or Drugs, Or With A Comforting Ideology. And If You Don't Think Life's A Comedy - Well, Friend, You Might As Well Hurry Along To That Burial. The Rest Of Us Need People With Whom We Can Laugh. -odd Thomas -odd Apocalypse By Dean Koontz Pg 30 Chapter 4

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

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

Infinite Universe

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

I Admit To Having An Imagination Feverish Enough To Melt Good Judgment.

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A Fine Line Separates The Weary Recluse From The Fearful Hermit. Finer Still Is The Line Between Hermit And Bitter Misanthrope.

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I'll Sit In The Park And Feed The Pigeons For A While.' We Don't Have Pigeons.' Then I'll Feed The Pterodactyls.

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...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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Alliteration Seems To Offend People.

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.

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

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

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

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

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.

Life Packed A Clever One-two Punch: Cruelty And Absurdity.

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

Although I've Said A Million Times That I'm Not A Horror Writer, I Do Like Horror.

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.

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.

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.

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

... And She Had Worn Bitterness As Though It Were A Crown.

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

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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.

The Hatred Of Truth Is The Taproot Of Violence.

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.

I Don't Find Slashing And Blood Flying Everywhere To Be Scary. I Just Find It Repulsive.

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.

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

This May Be The Primary Purpose Of Dogs: To Restore Our Sense Of Wonder And To Help Us Maintain It, To Make Us Consider That We Should Trust Our Intuition As They Trust Theirs And To Help Us Realize That A Thing Known Intuitively Can Be As Real As Anything Known By Material Experience.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When Tempest Tossed, Embrace Chaos

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Humanity Was Drawn To Turmoil And Self-destruction As Inevitably As The Earth Was Drawn To Complete Its Annual Revolution Of The Sun.

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.

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

In The End, It's All About Perseverance.

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

Rub-a-dub-dub. Cerebrum In A Tub.

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

In The Wind, The Trees, Like Agitated Lions Preparing To Roar, Shook Their Great Green Manes.

Reality Isn't What It Used To Be.

Is Rule Of Thumb In Writing Game: If Story Requires Many Long Descriptions Of Smells So Vile That Will Give Reader Nausea, Is Not Likely To Find Publisher.

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.

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

Unreason Is An Essential Medicine As Long As You Do Not Overdose.

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

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Always Thought Happiness Was A Choice And I Always Chose Things That Made Me Happy, And Books Were One Of Those.

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

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

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.

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.

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

In Self-defense And In Defense Of The Innocent, Cowardice Is The Only Sin.

Readers Will Stay With An Author, No Matter What The Variations In Style And Genre, As Long As They Get That Sense Of Story, Of Character, Of Empathetic Involvement.

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.

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

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.

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

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