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The Human Species Was Too Fond Of Lying, Cheating, Envy, Ignorance, Self-pity, Self-righteousness, And Utopian Visions That Always Led To Mass Murder-but Until And If It Destroyed Itself, It Harbored The Potential To Become Nobler, To Take Responsibility For Its Actions, To Live And Let Live, And To Earn The Stewardship Of The Earth.

-Dean Koontz

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The Human Species Was

Dean Koontz

...

The Human Species Was Too Fond Of Lying, Cheating, Envy, Ignorance, Self-pity, Self-righteousness, And Utopian Visions That Always Led To Mass Murder-but Until And If It Destroyed Itself, It Harbored The Potential To Become Nobler, To Take Responsibility For Its Actions, To Live And Let Live, And To Earn The Stewardship Of The Earth.

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It Was One Of Those Rare Times When Remembering The Dead Was More Inmportant Than Tending To The Needs Of The Living.

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

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

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

Home Is The First Refuge From - And Last Defense Against - The Disappointments And The Terrors Of Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.

Responsibility To Others

Sense Of Responsibility

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

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

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

The Sane Understand That Human Beings Are Incapable Of Sustaining Conspiracies On A Grand Scale, Because Some Of Our Most Defining Qualities As A Species Are Inattention To Detail, A Tendency To Panic, And An Inability To Keep Our Mouths Shut.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I See Dead People. But, Then By God, I Do Something About It!

The Dead Are Merely The Countrymen Of My Future.

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

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

Books Are Packaged Dreams.

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.

You Know What's Wrong With Humanity?... The Greatest Gift We Were Given Is Our Free Will, And We Keep Misusing It.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Happiness Is A Choice

On Those Occasions When He Had Killed In The Dark, He Later Needed To See His Victims' Faces Because, In Some Unlit Corner Of His Heart, He Half Expected To Find His Own Face Looking Up At Him, Ice-white And Dead-eyed. "deep Down," The Dream-victim Had Said, "you Know That You're Already Dead Yourself, Burnt Out Inside. You Realize That You Have Far More In Common With Your Victims After You've Killed Them Than Before.

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.

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.

Only Time Conquers Time And Its Burdens.

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

Infinite Universe

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The True Nature Of The World Was Weirder Than Any Bizarre Fabric That Anyone Might Weave From The Warp And Weft Of Imagination's Loom.

Cowards Shrink From Toil And Peril, Vulgar Souls Attempt And Fail; Men Of Mettle, Nothing Daunted, Persevere Till They Prevail.

Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

He Is Different, And There Will Be Many People You Love Who Will Be Unhappy With You. You Don’t Want Them To Feel You’ve Dishonored Them. Yes, I Know How It Is. But Life Is Short. A Chance For Great Happiness Doesn’t Come Along All That Often.

Thanks To The Circus Between My Ears, I Can Seize Upon The Smallest Disquieting Observation And From It Extrapolate A Terror Of Cataclysmic Proportions.

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.

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

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

Some People Misunderstand Evil And Believe It Will Relent, And Because Their Misplaced Hope Inspires Dark Hearts To Dream Darker Dreams, They Are The Fathers And Mothers Of All Wars. Evil Does Not Relent; It Must Be Defeated. And Even When Defeated, Uprooted, And Purified By Fire, Evil Leaves Behind A Seed That Will One Day Germinate And, In Blooming, Again Be Misunderstood.

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

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

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

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

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

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

It's Only Life. We All Get Through It. Not All Of Us Complete The Journey In The Same Condition. Along The Way, Some Lose Their Legs Or Eyes In Acidents Or Altercations, While Others Skate Through The Years With Nothing Worse To Worry About Than An Occassional Bad-hair Day. I Still Possessed Both Legs And Both Eyes, And Even My Hair Looked All Right When I Rose That Wednesday Morning In Late January. If I Returned To Bed Sixteen Hours Later, Having Lost All My Hair But Nothing Else, I Would Consider The Day A Triumph. Even Minus A Few Teeth, I'd Call It A Triumph.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

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

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

I Have More Self-doubt Than Any Writer I've Ever Known.... The Positive Aspect Of Self-doubt - If You Can Channel It Into Useful Activity Instead Of Being Paralyzed By It - Is That By The Time You Reach The End Of A Novel, You Know Precisely Why You Made Every Decision In The Narrative, The Multiple Purposes Of Every Metaphor And Image.

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

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.

The Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.

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.

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.

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.

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

Like Children, Dogs Want Discipline And Are Most Secure When They Have Rules To Live By. The Happiest Dogs Are Those With Gentle Masters Who Quietly But Firmly Demand Respect.

Rules To Live By

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

What Will Happen Will Happen. There Is Time For Miracles Until There Is No More Time, But Time Has No End.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

All But Universally, Human Architecture Values Front Elevations Over Back Entrances, Public Spaces Over Private. Danny Jessup Says That This Aspect Of Architecture Is Also A Reflection Of Human Nature, That Most People Care More About Their Appearance Than They Do About Their Souls.

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

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

He Was Sure That He Was Not The Cause Of The Abrupt Silence. His Passage Through The Canyon Had Not Previously Disturbed Either Birds Or Cicadas. Something Was Out There. An Intruder Of Which The Ordinary Forest Creatures Clearly Did Not Approve. He Took A Deep Breath And Held It Again, Straining To Hear The Slightest Movement In The Woods. This Time He Detected The Rustle Of Brush, A Snapping Twig, The Soft Crunch Of Dry Leaves-and The Unnervingly Peculiar, Heavy, Ragged Breathing Of Something Big.

The Geometry Of Judgment Is A Circle. Hate Is A Snake That Turns To Consume Itself From The Tail, A Circle That Diminishes To A Point, Then To Nothing. Pride Is Such A Snake, And Envy, And Greed. Love, However, Is A Hoop, A Wheel, That Rolls On Forever. We Are Rescued By Those Whom We Have Rescued. The Saved Become The Saviors Of Their Saviors.

When Tempest Tossed, Embrace Chaos

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.

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

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.

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.

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