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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.

-Dean Koontz

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That Is, Jack Thought,

Dean Koontz

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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.

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

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

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

While Life Could Be Evaded, Death Could Not.

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.

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.

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

Being Alone Can Be Good. It's Easy To Find Peace Alone. But Sometimes, Being Alone Is A King Of Death.

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.

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.

What We Do As A Society Is Seek Simple Answers.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

We Never Had Books In The House. Not Any Book In Our House. Not A Bible, Not Anything. So, I Would Go The Library From A Very Young Age And Get The Books Out.

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

Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.

Responsibility To Others

Sense Of Responsibility

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.

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

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.

We Are Buried When We're Born. The World Is A Place Of Graves Occupied And Graves Potential. Life Is What Happens While We Wait For Our Appointment With The Mortician.

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

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.

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

Behind Every Closed Door Might Wait A Thief Of Minds And A Collector Of Souls.

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.

Love And Friendship

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In The End, It's All About Perseverance.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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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.

I'm Either A Mutant Or A Cripple, And I Refuse To Be A Cripple. People Pity Cripples, But They're Afraid Of Mutants [...] Fear Implies Respect.

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

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

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

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Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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

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

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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.

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

Although The Constant Shadow Of Certain Death Looms Over Everyday, The Pleasures And Joys Of Life Can Be So Fine And Affecting That The Heart Is Nearly Stilled In Astonishment.

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Like Being Alone

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.

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

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

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Rules To Live By

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.

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

Happiness Is A Choice

Holy Men Tell Us Life Is A Mystery. They Embrace That Concept Happily. But Some Mysteries Bite And Bark And Come To Get You In The Dark.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Billy Pilgrim Had A Theory About Diaries. Women Were More Likely Than Men To Think That Their Lives Had Sufficient Meaning To Require Recording On A Daily Basis. It Was Not For The Most Part A God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey Kind Of Meaning, But More An I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares Sentimentalism That Passed For Meaning, And They Usually Stopped Keeping A Diary By The Time They Hit Thirty, Because By Then They Didn't Want To Ponder The Meaning Of Life Anymore Because It Scared The Crap Out Of Them.

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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.

A Long Walk And Grooming With A Well-mannered Dog Is A Zen Experience That Leaves You Refreshed And In A Creative Frame Of Mind.

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.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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

As Long As I Have Laughter, I Am Not Without Hope

The Hatred Of Truth Is The Taproot Of Violence.

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.

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

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.

Never, Never Try To Scope The Market.

His Blue Eyes Were Seas Where Sorrow Sailed.

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

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

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

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

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.

Few Human Beings Give Of Themselves To Another As A Dog Gives Of Itself.

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.

There Are Days When It Seems To Me That In Literature The Most Convincing Depiction Of The World In Which We Live Is To Be Found In The Phantasmagorical Kingdom Through Which Lewis Carroll Took Alice On A Tour.

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

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

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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

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.

...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.

A Silent Dark...as Black As A Moonless Lake, As A Ravine's Wings, Darkness There And Nothing More, Merely This And Nothing More.

Atlas Isn't Carrying The World On His Shoulders, No Giant Muscular Hulk With A Sense Of Responsibility; The World Is Balanced On A Pyramid Of Clowns, And They Are Always Tooting Horns And Wobbling And Goosing Each Other.

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

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

I Realized You Might Make Money At Writing, And You Might Even Make A Living At It. So After That I Didn't Write Stories Just For The Class But Wrote Them For The Purpose Of Submitting Them Somewhere, And At Some Point In The Process, I Began Writing Them Just To Please Myself And That's Where You Begin To See The Real Value Of A Life Of Writing.

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.

How Passionately We Love Everything That Cannot Last: The Dazzling Crystallory Of Winter, The Spring In Bloom, The Fragile Flight Of Butterflies, Crimson Sunsets, A Kiss, And Life.

In This World Only The Paranoid Survive.

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

The Only Thing I Know For Sure Is How Much I Do Not Know.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The World Needed A Little Evil, So Good Had Something To Compare Itself To, But You Couldn't Let It Think It Had The Right-of-way On The Road And An Invitation To Dinner.

There Are No Explanations For Human Evil. Only Excuses.

Petting, Scratching, And Cuddling A Dog Could Be As Soothing To The Mind And Heart As Deep Meditation And Almost As Good For The Soul As Prayer.

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.

A Politician's Goal Is Always To Manipulate Public Debate. I Think There Are Some Politicians With Higher Goals. But All Of Them Get Corrupted By Power.

Besides, I Can't Get To Where I Want To Go By Conscious Or Unconscious Suicide. I've Got My Strange Little Life To Lead. Leading It The Best I Can - That's How I Buy The Ticket To Where I Want To Be.

I Imagined A Life That Turned Out To Be Pretty Much Exactly Like The One I've Had. That Fascinates Me Endlessly. I Wake Up Many Mornings, And It Almost Wouldn't Surprise Me If I Woke Up From It And It Was All A Dream.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

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

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

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

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.

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

My Wife Is My First Audience. She's A Tough Lady, So I Can't Say That I Ever Scare Her. Except, Of Course, When She Sees Me The Way I Look Before Breakfast.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

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.

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.

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

What Does Worry Accomplish Except To Breed More Worry?

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

The Wives Of Spartans Are The Secret Pillars Of The World."--odd Thomas

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

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

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 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.

Bunny Slippers Remind Me Of Who I Am.you Can't Get A Swelled Head If You Wear Bunny Slippers. You Can't Lose Your Sense Of Perspective And Start Acting Like A Star Or A Rich Lady If You Keep On Wearing Bunny Slippers. Besides, Bunny Slippers Give Me Confidence Because They're So Jaunty. They Make A Statement; They Say, 'nothing The World Does To Me Can Ever Get Me So Far Down That I Can't Be Silly And Frivolous.

Perseverance Is Impossible If We Don't Permit Ourselves To Hope.

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

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

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

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.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy. This, More Than Any Other Trait, Proves My Fundamental Humanity.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

He Once Told Me That An August Evening Was "as Hot As Three Toads In A Cuisinart," A Comparison That Left Me Blinking Two Days Later.

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

Every Eye Sees Its Own Special Vision; Every Ear Hears A Most Different Song. In Each Man's Troubled Heart, An Incision Would Reveal A Unique, Shameful Wrong.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

All These Girls Swooning Over Hunky Vampires, What They Really Want Is To Give Away Their Freedom, To Be Controlled And Told What To Do And Not Have To Think -- And Never Die, Of Course. It's Sick Is What It Is. I Don't Want To Be A Forever-young Living Corpse.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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.

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

Here In The Summer Desert, Winter Found My Blood

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.

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

She'd Been Acutely Aware That Terror, Betrayal, And Cruelty Had A Human Face, But She Had Not Sufficiently Appreciated That Courage, Kindness, And Love Had A Human Face As Well.

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