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We Are Not, However, A Species That Can Choose The Baggage With Which We Must Travel. In Spite Of Our Best Intentions, We Always Find That We Have Brought Along A Suitcase Or Two Of Darkness And Despair.

-Dean Koontz

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We Are Not, However,

Dean Koontz

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We Are Not, However, A Species That Can Choose The Baggage With Which We Must Travel. In Spite Of Our Best Intentions, We Always Find That We Have Brought Along A Suitcase Or Two Of Darkness And Despair.

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

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.

The Destruction That Barbarians Leave Behind Has A Grim Fascination, Doesn't It? We're Reminded How Thin Is The Veneer Of Civilization.

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

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.

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

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 Saddest Thing In The World Was That Human Beings, For All Their Ardent Striving And Desire, Could Never Achieve Physical, Emotional, Or Intellectual Perfection. The Species Was Doomed To Imperfection; It Thrashed Forever In Despair Or Denial Of That Fact.

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

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

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

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Six Billion Of Us Walking The Planet, Six Billion Smaller Worlds On The Bigger One. Shoe Salesmen And Short-order Cooks Who Look Boring From The Outside - Some Have Weirder Lives Than You. Six Billion Stories, Every One An Epic, Full Of Tragedy And Triumph, Good And Evil, Despair And Hope. You And Me - We Aren't So Special, Bro.

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

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.

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.

Every Book Has Some Real Life In It. I Was Never Pursued By An Evil Twin Clone, But Everything Else In Mr. Murder Was Pretty Much Out Of My Own Life.

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.

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

Every Writer Has His Own Voice. Other Than That I'm Always Trying To Do Change-ups And Publishers Haven't Always Been Happy About That.

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

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 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.

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.

In Spite Of Where We Were, How We Had Gotten Here And Why We Had Come, I Felt That At This Moment Of Our Lives, This Place Was Exactly Where We Belonged. We Were Not Drifting But Rising, Rising Toward Something Right And Of Significance.

I 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.

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

When New Hopes Fail, Old Hopes Return In The Endless Cycle Of Desperation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

Fate Isn’t One Straight Road…there Are Forks In It, Many Different Routes To Different Ends. We Have The Free Will To Choose The Path.

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

...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.

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

Blizzards, Floods, Volcanos, Hurricanes, Earthquakes: They Fascinate Because They Nakedly Reveal That Mother Nature, Afflicted With Bipolar Disorder, Is As Likely To Snuff Us As She Is To Succor Us.

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.

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.

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.

Night Has Patterns That Can Be Read Less By The Living Than By The Dead.

We Are Not, However, A Species That Can Choose The Baggage With Which We Must Travel. In Spite Of Our Best Intentions, We Always Find That We Have Brought Along A Suitcase Or Two Of Darkness And Despair.

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.

In My Personal Life, I'm A Comic Novel. But Then, So Are We All, Because We're Human Beings.

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

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

I Was Looking Forward To Having A Halo. It Would Make Such A Convenient Reading Lamp.

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

Even 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.

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?

I Survive By Finding The Sweet Spot Between Reason And Unreason, Between The Rational And Irrational.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

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.

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.

In My Books, I Never Portray Violence As A Reasonable Solution To A Problem. If The Lead Characters In The Story Are Driven To It, It's At The Extreme End Of Their Experience.

I Believe That We Carry Within Us A Divinely Inspired Moral Imperative To Love ... We Have Within Us The Ability To Change For The Better And To Find Dignity As Individuals Rather Than As Drones In One Mass Movement Or Another. We Have The Ability To Love, The Need To Be Loved, And The Willingness To Put Our Own Lives On The Line To Protect Those We Love, And It Is In These Aspects Of Ourselves That We Can Glimpse The Face Of God; And Through The Exercise Of These Qualities, We Come To A Godlike State.

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

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

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.

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.

Death Came, Death Went, But Commerce Flowed Eternal.

The Snow Did Not Even Whisper Its Way To Earth, But Seemed To Salt The Night With Silence.

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

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.

Are You Prepared For The First Wound?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Are An Arrogant Species, Full Of Terrible Potential, But We Also Have A Great Capacity For Love, Friendship, Generosity, Kindness, Faith, Hope, And Joy.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

You Won't Find The Truth Of Life In Morbidity, Only In Hope.

A Man Begins Dying At The Moment Of His Birth. Most People Live In Denial Of Death's Patient Courtship Until, Late In Life And Deep In Sickness, They Become Aware Of Him Sitting Bedside.

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.

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

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.

Golden Retrievers Are Not Bred To Be Guard Dogs, And Considering The Size Of Their Hearts And Their Irrepressible Joy In Life, They Are Less Likely To Bite Than To Bark, Less Likely To Bark Than To Lick A Hand In Greeting. In Spite Of Their Size, They Think They Are Lap Dogs, And In Spite Of Being Dogs, They Think They Are Also Human, And Nearly Every Human They Meet Is Judged To Have The Potential To Be A Boon Companion Who Might, At Many Moment, Cry, "let's Go!" And Lead Them On A Great Adventure.

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

The Hatred Of Truth Is The Taproot Of Violence.

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.

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.

Every Expression Of Desired Friendship Has Potential Bite. Every Smile Reveals The Teeth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

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

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.

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

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?

Pain Is A Gift. Humanity, Without Pain, Would Know Neither Fear Nor Pity. Without Fear, There Could Be No Humility, And Every Man Would Be A Monster. The Recognition Of Pain And Fear In Others Give Rise In Us To Pity, And In Our Pity Is Our Humanity, Our Redemption.

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

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

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

There’s Just Something Unsettling About Studying Your Reflection. It’s Not A Matter Of Being Dissatisfied With Your Face Or Of Being Embarrassed By Your Vanity. Maybe It’s That When You Gaze Into Your Own Eyes, You Don’t See What You Wish To See—or Glimpse Something That You Wish Weren’t There.

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

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

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.

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.

Don't Tell Me What's Necessary, You Presumptupus Pup. What's Necessary Is Whatever I Wish To Do, Regardless Of How Unnecessary It Might Be.

Time Doesn’t, As Advertised, Heal All Wounds. Although The Wrenching Immediacy Of Grief Eventually Passed, The Settled Sorrow That Replaced It Might In Its Own Way Be Even More Intense.

I 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Worst Happens When You Least Expect It

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

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.

You Can't Always Win Arguments As A Writer, But You Have To Just Go Ahead And Say, Well, I'm Doing It That Way Anyway.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Best Thing That Can Happen To A Man Is A Good Woman.

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.

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

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.

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

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

In Misfortune Lies The Seed Of Future Triumph.

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

Maybe When All Was Said And Done, The Imagination Was The Most Powerful Of All Weapons. It Was The Imagination Of The Human Race That Had Allowed It To Dream Of A Life Beyond Cold Caves And Of A Possible Future In The Stars.

Pain Can Be Endured And Defeated Only If It Is Embraced. Denied Or Feared, It Grows.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There's Never Any Humongous Next Draft. I Know A Writer Who Every Time He Finished A Novel - You Would Know His Name Very Well - But His Editor Would Come And Live With Him For A Month. And They Would Go Through The Manuscript Together.

We Live In God's Amusement Park.

Amusement Parks

I Love My Editor, But That Would Be The Definition Of Hell To Me To Live With Someone And Have Them Go Page By Page Through My Manuscript. That I Want To Avoid At All Costs.

Never, Never Try To Scope The Market.

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.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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

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

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

Sometimes Waiting Is The Hardest Thing.

The Recognition Of Pain And Fear In Others Give Rise In Us To Pity, And In Our Pity Is Our Humanity, Our Redemption.

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

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

I Am Basically A Pretty Good Autodidact. I Can Teach Myself Things.

Narcissists Are Everywhere In This Ripe Age Of Self-love, Which Amazes Me Because So Much In Life Would Seem To Foster Humility. Each Of Us Is A Potential Source Of Foolishness, Each Of Us Must Endure The Consequences Of The Foolishness Of Others, And In Addition To All Of That, Nature Frequently Works To Impress Upon Us Our Absurdity And Thereby Remind Us That We Are Not The Masters Of The Universe That We Like To Suppose We Are. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse By Dean Koontz Pg 62 Chapter 8

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.

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

In This World Only The Paranoid Survive.

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

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.

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.

You Can Con God And Get Away With It, Granny Said, If You Do So With Charm And Wit. If You Live Your Life With Imagination And Verve, God Will Play Along Just To See What Outrageously Entertaining Thing You'll Do Next.

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

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

That Is, Jack Thought, The Way Of Life. The Horror Changes Us, Because We Can Never Forget. Cursed With Memory. It Starts When We're Old Enough To Know What Death Is And Realize That Sooner Or Later We'll Lose Everyone We Love. We're Never The Same. But Somehow We're All Right. We Go On.

We Are Coming Out Of A Century That Was Taught That One Way Of Looking At The World, That One Form Of Behavior, Is As Valid As Another. The Idea Of True Evil Has Been Blown Away.

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.

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.

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

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

Happiness Is A Choice

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.

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.

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

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.

On The Road That I Have Taken, One Day Walking I Awaken, Amazed To See Where I've Come, Where I'm Going, Where I'm From.

What Sucks The Worst Is . . . This World Was A Gift To Us, And We Broke It, And Part Of The Deal Is That If We Want Things Right, We Have To Fix It Ourselves. But We Can't. We Try, But We Can't.

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.

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.

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.

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