Background Image

...

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.

-Dean Koontz

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Odd: I Wish I

Dean Koontz

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Dean Koontz

In The Real World As In Dreams Nothing Is Quite What It Seems. -the Book Of Counted Sorrows

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.

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

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

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.

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

Everything Happens For A Reason

Envy, Envy Eats Them Alive. If You Had Money, They’d Envy You That. But Since You Don’t, They Envy You For Having Such A Good, Bright, Loving Daughter. They Envy You For Just Being A Happy Man. They Envy You For Not Envying Them. One Of The Greatest Sorrows Of Human Existence Is That Some People Aren’t Happy Merely To Be Alive But Find Their Happiness Only In The Misery Of Others.

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

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.

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

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

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.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Think It's Perfectly Just To Refuse Service To Anyone Based On Behavior, But Not Based On Race Or Religion.

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.

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.

As An Attorney, I Assure You The Law Isn't A Line Engraved In Marble, Immovable And Unchangeable Through The Centuries. Rather The Law Is Like A String, Fixed At Both Ends But With A Great Deal Of Play In It Very Loose, The Line Of The Law So You Can Stretch It This Way Or That, Rearrange The Arc Of It So You Are Nearly Always Short Of Blatant Theft Or Cold-blooded Murder Safely On The Right Side. That's A Daunting Thing To Realize But True.

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.

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.

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

Given My Heritage And The Ordeal Of My Childhood, I Sometimes Wonder Why I Myself Am Not Insane. Maybe I Am.

We Must Seize Life Because We Never Know How Much Of It Remains For Us, That Faith Is The Antidote To Despair And That Laughter Is The Music Of Faith.

Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.

Responsibility To Others

Sense Of Responsibility

I've Got Evil In Me As Much As Anyone, Some Desires That Scare Me. Even If I Don't Give In To Them, Just Having Them Scares The Living Bejesus Out Of Me Sometimes. I'm No Saint, The Way You Kid About. But I've Always Walked The Line, Walked That Goddamned Line. It's A Mean Mother Of A Line, Straight And Narrow, Sharp As A Razor, Cuts Right Into You When You Walk It Long Enough. You're Always Bleeding On That Line, And Sometimes You Wonder Why You Don't Just Step Off And Walk In The Cool Grass.

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

The Selfless Love That We Give To Others, To The Point Of Being Willing To Sacrifice Our Lives For Them, Is All The Proof I Need That Human Beings Are Not Mere Animals Of Self-interest. We Carry Within Us A Divine Spark, And If We Chose To Recognize It, Our Lives Have Dignity, Meaning, Hope.

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

My Life Has A Mysterious Purpose That I Don't Understand, And Day By Day, Conflict By Conflict, I Learn By Going Where I Have To Go.

In Each Little Life, We Can See Great Truth And Beauty, And In Each Little Life We Glimpse The Way Of All Things In The Universe. If We Alow Ourselves To Be Enchanted By The Beauty Of The Ordinary, We Begin To See That All Things Extraordinary.

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

Lies Hurt People; Imagination Makes Life More Fun.

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

The Opportunity To Love A Dog And To Treat It With Kindness Is An Opportunity For A Lost And Selfish Heart To Be Redeemed. They Are Powerless And Innocent, And It Is How We Treat The Humblest Among Us That Surely Determines The Fate Of Our Souls

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.

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.

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

If Wishes Were Filet Mignon, We'd Always Eat Well At Dinner

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Worst Happens When You Least Expect It

What Doesn't Quicken Dies. That's An Indisputable Truth Of Life.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Faced With The Challenge Of An Endless Universe, Man Will Be Forced To Mature Further, Just As The Neanderthal-faced With An Entire Planet-had No Choice But To Grow Away From The Tradition Of Savagery.

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.

Once You Have Had A Wonderful Dog, A Life Without One, Is A Life Diminished.

Some Days I'm Lucky To Squeeze Out A Page Of Copy That Pleases Me, But I Get As Many As Six Or Seven Pages On A Very Good Day; The Average Is Probably Three Pages.

Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

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

My Life Would Be Constrained By The Horror And Fierce Rage That My Appearance Inspired, But I Would Know Peace As Well As Fear, Tenderness As Well As Brutality, And Even Love In A Time Of Cruelty.

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

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.

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.

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?

If I Drive Myself To The Brink Of My Ability, Then I Don't Get Stale Or Bored.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Given Enough Time, You Could Convince Yourself That Loneliness Was Something Better, That It Was Solitude, The Ideal Condition For Reflection, Even A Kind Of Freedom. Once You Were Thus Convinced, You Were Foolish To Open The Door And Let Anyone In, Not All The Way In. You Risked The Hard-won Equilibrium, That Tranquility That You Called Peace

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 Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.

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

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.

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.

The Most Identifying Trait Of Humanity Is Our Abilty To Be Inhumane To One Another.

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

In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

Where There's Cake, There's Hope. And There's Always Cake.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Out Of Sight Above The House, The Mirror Moon Reflected The Sun Of A Day Not Yet Dawned, Shining The Pale Light Of Tomorrow On The Yard And On The Paper Birches.

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.

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.

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.

If We Were Capable Of Thinking Of Everything, We Would Still Be Living In Eden, Rent-free With All-you-can-eat Buffets And Infinitely Better Daytime Tv Programming.

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

I Come Down On The Side Of Free Will But I Have Sympathy For Those Who Believe In Fate Because There Is Something About Life Which We Feel We Have No Control Over.

Of Course, I Don't Know Everything. Considering The Infinite Amount Of Knowledge That One Could Acquire In A Virtually Innumerable Array Of Intellectual Disciplines, It's Probably More Accurate To Say That I Don't Know Anything.

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.

...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

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.

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.

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

Alliteration Seems To Offend People.

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

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

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

This World, Which Has The Potential To Be Eden, Is Instead The Hell Before Hell. In Our Arrogance, We Have Made It So.

Sometimes Many Publishers Prefer That You Write The Same Book Every Time, But I Have A Low Boredom Threshold So That Isn't Going To Happen.

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.

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.

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

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

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

When A Knot Gets To Tight, You Can Always Cut The Rope

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

I Work On One Page, Revising And Polishing Until I Can't Make It Better, Then Move On To The Next. Some Pages Might Get 20 Or More Drafts Before I Move On.

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.

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.

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.

We Can Approach Belief From An Intellectual Path, But In The End, God Must Be Taken On Faith. Proofs Are For Things Of This World, Things In Time And Of Time, Not Beyond Time.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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.

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

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

She Might Have Been Born This Way, Without An Empathy Gene And Other Essentials. In That Case, She Would Interpret Any Kindness As Weakness. Among Predatory Beasts, Any Display Of Weakness Is An Invitation To Attack.

I Never Discuss A Novel While I'm Writing It, For Fear That Talking About It Will Diminish My Desire To Write It.

Life Had Not Taught Me To Distrust Ministers, But It Had Taught Me To Trust No One More Than Dogs.

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

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

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

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.

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

Never, Never Try To Scope The Market.

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

What Does Worry Accomplish Except To Breed More Worry?

He Said, If You Allow Yourself To Be Enchanted By The Beauty To Be Seen In Even Ordinary Things, Then All Things Proved To Be Extraordinary.

Fear Is A Poison Produced By The Mind, And Courage Is The Antidote Stored Always Ready In The Soul

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

Literary Fiction, As A Strict Genre, Is All But Dead. Meanwhile, Most Genres Flourish.

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

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

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

In The End, It's All About Perseverance.

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

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.

We're Out Of Cocktail Olives, It's A Tragedy Of Historic Proportions, But We're Coping Because We're Americans.

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

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

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

Evil Itself May Be Relentless. I Will Grant You That, But Love Is Relentless Too. Friendship Is A Relentless Force. Family Is A Relentless Force. Faith Is Relentless Force. The Human Spirit Is Relentless, And The Human Heart Outlasts - And Can Defeat - Even The Most Relentless Force Of All, Which Is Time.

Every World Has Dogs Or Their Equivalent, Creatures That Thrive On Companionship, Creatures That Are Of A High Order Of Intelligence Although Not The Highest And That Therefore Is Simple Enough In Their Wants And Needs To Remain Innocent. The Combination Of Their Innocence And Their Intelligence Allows Them To Serve As A Bridge Bewtween What Is Transient And What Is Eternal, Between The Finate And The Infinate.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Each Smallest Act Of Kindness, Reverberates Across Great Distances And Spans Of Time --affecting Lives Unknown To The One Who’s Generous Spirit, Was The Source Of This Good Echo. Because Kindness Is Passed On And Grows Each Time It’s Passed Until A Simple Courtesy Becomes An Act Of Selfless Courage, Years Later, And Far Away. Likewise, Each Small Meanness, Each Expression Of Hatred, Each Act Of Evil.

It Will All Be Better In The End And If It Is Not Better Then It Must Not Be The End Yet

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.

When Things Are Baffling They Usually Don't Unbaffle Themselves.there's Just, You Know, A Certain Amount Of Baffling Stuff That Always, Like, Really Baffles You, And I've Found That It's Best To Accept Bafflement Whenever It Comes Along, And Then Move On.

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

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

I Think It's The People Who Have No Doubt That Every Word They Put Down Is Gold That Probably Don't Write Very Well.

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

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.

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.

Stay Low, Stay Quiet, Keep It Simple, Don't Expect Too Much, Enjoy What You Have.

I Build A Book The Way Coral Reefs Are Built: Millions Of Little Calcareous Skeletons Piling Up One Atop Another, Though In My Case The Skeletons Are Drafts.

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

Without Faith To Act As A Governor, The Human Mind Is A Runaway Worry Generator, A Dynamo Of Negative Expectations.

Is There Some Meaning To This Life? What Purpose Lies Behind The Strife? Whence Do We Come, Where Are We Bound? These Cold Questions Echo And Resound Through Each Day, Each Lonely Night. We Long To Find The Splendid Light That Will Cast A Revelatory Beam Upon The Meaning Of The Human Dream. Courage, Love, Friendship, Compassion, And Empathy Lift Us Above The Simple Beasts And Define Humanity.

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.

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.

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

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.

No, If There's Any Ultimate Redemption, It Would Be Because I Passed Though Your Life Without Scarring You, And Did Not Diminish Who You Are.

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.

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

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

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

Imagine That You Are More Than Nothing. Evil Made You, But You Are No More Evil Than A Child Unborn. If You Want, If You Seek, If You Hope, Who Is To Say That Your Hope Might Not Be Answered?

Sometimes Waiting Is The Hardest Thing.

Inaction Counted As A Choice.

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

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

Most People Tend To Think The Best Of Those Who Are Blessed With Beauty; We Have Difficulty Imagining That Physical Perfection Can Conceal Twisted Emotions Or A Damaged Mind.

What Year These Events Transpired Is Of No Consequence. Where They Occured Is Not Important. The Time Is Always, And The Place Is Everywhere.

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

Mankind Has No Right To Employ Its Genius In The Creation Of Another Intelligent Species, Then Treat It Like Property. If We've Come So Far That We Can Create As God Creates, Then We Have To Learn To Act With The Justice And Mercy Of God.

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.

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

In A World That Daily Disconnects Further From Truth, More And More People Accept The Virtual In Place Of The Real, And All Things Virtual Are Also Malleable.

The Hatred Of Truth Is The Taproot Of Violence.

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.

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.

Trending Author

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Category