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Sometimes, Life Seems To Have A Higher Meaning. Events Unfold In Uncanny Sequences. Long-forgotten Acquaintances Turn Up With News That Changes Lives. A Stranger Appears And Speaks A Few Words Of Wisdom, Solving A Previously Insoluble Problem, Or Something In A Recent Dream Transpires In Reality. Suddenly The Existence Of God Seems Confirmed.

-Dean Koontz

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Sometimes, Life Seems To

Dean Koontz

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Sometimes, Life Seems To Have A Higher Meaning. Events Unfold In Uncanny Sequences. Long-forgotten Acquaintances Turn Up With News That Changes Lives. A Stranger Appears And Speaks A Few Words Of Wisdom, Solving A Previously Insoluble Problem, Or Something In A Recent Dream Transpires In Reality. Suddenly The Existence Of God Seems Confirmed.

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I Like To Deal With Every Aspect Of Our Condition, And That Means Terror And Humor In Equal Mix. Some Books Have More Room For Humor Than Others.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Experts Must Read The Patterns And Judge Their Usefulness As Evidence. Under Any Of Numerous Pressures, An Expert May Wish To Misread A Pattern Or Even To Alter It. Americans Had A Touching Trust In "experts".

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

Alliteration Seems To Offend People.

Eventually, As My Books Became Best-sellers, The Nickels Pile Up And One Day I Was Offered A Substantial Four-book Deal That Was Lucrative As Any Airliner Hijacking In History. Though Writing Those Four Books Was Hard Work, At Least I Didn't Have To Wear Kevlar Body Armor, Carry Heavy Bandoliers Of Spare Ammunition, Or Work With Associates Named Mad Dog.

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

I Do Give Books As Gifts Sometimes, When People Would Rather Have One Than A New Ferrari.

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.

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.

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.

If You Write With Passion In Your Own Style, You Will Make A Place For Yourself

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

Acting Is A Marvelous Profession ... If You Can Spend Enough Time Playing Other People, You Don't Have To Think Too Much About Your Own Character And Motivations.

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.

If We Were Always Conscious Of The Fact That People Precious To Us Are Frighteningly Mortal, Hanging Not Even By A Thread, But By A Wisp Of Gossamer, Perhaps We Would Be Kinder To Them And More Grateful For The Love And Friendship They Give To Us.

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

One Of The Things I Like Enormously About Bob Weinstein Is That That He's The Only Studio Head I Have Ever Known Who Will Change His Mind And Say He Was Wrong.

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.

Southerners Have Many Fine Qualities, Charm And Civility Among Them, And A Sense Of The Tragic.

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.

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

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.

In This Uncertain Space Between Birth And Death, Especially Here At The End Of The World In Moonlight Bay, We Need Hope As Surely As We Need Food And Water, Love And Friendship. The Trick, However, Is To Remember That Hope Is A Perilous Thing, That It's Not A Steel And Concrete Bridge Across The Void Between This Moment And A Brighter Future. Hope Is No Stronger Than Tremulous Beads Of Dew Strung On A Filament Of Spider Web, And It Alone Can't Long Support The Terrible Weight Of An Anguished Mind And A Tortured Heart.

Most Universities Are No Longer Temples Of Knowledge, But Of Power, And True Moderns Worship There.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Human Beings Can Always Be Relied Upon To Exert, With Vigor, Their God-given Right To Be Stupid.

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

Less Real Than Such Threats As A Man With A Gun, A Woman With A Knife, Or A U.s. Senator With An Idea.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Writing A Novel Is Like Making Love, But It's Also Like Having A Tooth Pulled. Pleasure And Pain. Sometimes It's Like Making Love While Having A Tooth Pulled.

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

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.

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.

You've Taught Me That We're All Needed, Even Those Who Sometimes Think We're Worthless, Plain And Dull. If We Love And Allow Ourselves To Be Loved...well, A Person Who Loves Is The Most Precious Thing In The World, Worth All The Fortunes That Ever Were. That's What You've Taught Me, Fur Face,and Because Of You I'll Never Be The Same.

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

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've Got A Long List Of Books I Wish I'd Never Written-and I've Kept Them All Out Of Print For The Past 20 Years.

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

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.

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.

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.

After Once Having Made The Mistake Of Watching Television News, I Had Worried For A While About An Asteroid Hitting The Earth And Wiping Out Human Civilization. The Anchorwoman Had Said It Was Not Merely Possible But Probable. At The End Of The Report, She Smiled.

Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

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

Language Can't Describe Reality. Literature Has No Stable Reference, No Real Meaning. Each Reader's Interpretation Is Equally Valid, More Important Than The Author's Intention. In Fact, Nothing In Life Has Meaning. Reality Is Subjective. Values And Truths Are Subjective. Life Itself Is A Kind Of Illusion. Blah, Blah, Blah, Let's Have Another Scotch.

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Sometimes Waiting Is The Hardest Thing.

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.

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.

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

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

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.

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

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

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.

One Door Away From Heaven And The Key Is Ours To Lose. One Door Away From Heaven But Oh, The Entry Dues.

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.

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

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.

It Is Human Nature To Want To Believe In The Wizardry Of The Magician--but Also To Turn Against Him And To Scorn Him The Moment That He Commits The Slightest Error That Reveals His Trickery. Those In The Audience Are Embarrassed To Have Been So Easily Astonished, And They Blame The Performer For Their Gullibility.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The More You Expect From Life, The More Your Expectations Will Be Fulfilled. By Laughing, You Do Not Use Up Your Laughter, But Increase Your Store Of It. The More You Love, The More You Will Be Loved. The More You Give, The More You Will Receive. Life Proves That Truth Every Hour, Every Day. And Life Continues To Surprise.

All I Ask Of Fate Is That The People She Hurls Into My Life, Whether They Are Evil Or Good, Or Morally Bipolar, Should Be Amusing To One Degree Or Another.... The Problem Is Finding Smile-inducing Evil People, Because The Evil Are The Most Humorless, Though In The Movies They Frequently Get Some Of The Best Lines.

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

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

There's Sometimes A Weird Benefit To Having An Alcoholic, Violent Father. He Really Motivated Me In That I Never Wanted To Be Anything Like Him.

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.

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

In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

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

The Hands Of Every Clock Are Shears, Trimming Us Away Scrap By Scrap, And Every Time Piece With A Digital Readout Blinks Us Towards Implosion.

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.

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.

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

Evil Men Often Easy To Mislead, Because They Have Spent So Long Deceiving That They No Longer Recognise The Truth And Mistake Deseption For It.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 World Is A Very Complex And Interesting Place And That Is What I Really Want My Fiction To Say: Wake Up To How Amazing The World Is.

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

What Looks Tragic Might Be Comic On Second Consideration, And What Is Comic Might Bring Tears In Time.

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.

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

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

She Was Fascinated With Words. To Her, Words Were Things Of Beauty, Each Like A Magical Powder Or Potion That Could Be Combined With Other Words To Create Powerful Spells.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

But The More People We Love And The More Deeply We Love Them, The More Vulnerable We Are To Loss And Grief And Loneliness.

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.

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.

Each Book Is A Mind Alive, A Life Revealed, A World Awaiting Exploration, But Living People Are All Those Things, As Well—and More, Because Their Stories Haven’t Yet Been Completely Told.

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

Only Time Conquers Time And Its Burdens.

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.

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

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

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?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

There's Evil In The World, All Right. Being Aware Of It Makes You A Realist, Not A Paranoid.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

...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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

We Live In God's Amusement Park.

Amusement Parks

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.

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

Have Fun, Entertain Yourself With Your Work, Make Yourself Laugh And Cry With Your Own Stories, Make Yourself Shiver In Suspense Along With Your Characters. If You Can Do That, Then You Will Most Likely Find A Large Audience; But Even If A Large Audience Is Never Found, You'll Have A Happy Life.

A Great Deal Of Phenomenal Experience Has Fostered In Me A Flexibility Of The Mind And Imagination That Some Might Call Madness

Reality Isn't What It Used To Be.

The Only Thing We Can't Buy More Of Is Time." She Said. "and Dodo Birds. We Can't Buy Any More Of Them. They're Extinct. And Dinosaurs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If I Had To Write A Rough Draft, All The Way Through And Then Go Back And Start Over, I Probably Would Just Stop Writing. I Wouldn't Find That Interesting. I Would Feel That I Had Committed So Many Things To The Paper That I Couldn't Easily Undo Because One Thing Leads To The Next, The Interconnectedness, The Sequences Would Make It Very Hard To Change Something That Simply Didn't Work.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

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.

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.

Inaction Counted As A Choice.

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.

Here In The Summer Desert, Winter Found My Blood

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

The Dead Are Merely The Countrymen Of My Future.

The Worst Happens When You Least Expect It

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

Its A Rare Thing To Know One Completly To The Core And Stil Love Him

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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

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.

Without Trust, There Can Be No Tranquil Resting Of The Mind.

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

His Blue Eyes Were Seas Where Sorrow Sailed.

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

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.

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.

We Need To Laugh At The Irrationality Of Evil, For In Doing So We Deny Evil's Power Over Us, Diminish Its Influence In The World, And Tarnish The Allure It Has For Some People.

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Francois Fenelon

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