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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.

-Dean Koontz

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What Sucks The Worst

Dean Koontz

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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.

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The Whisper Of The Dusk Is Night Shedding Its Husk.

Between Birth And Burial, We Find Ourselves In A Comedy Of Mysteries. If You Don't Think Life Is Mysterious, If You Believe You Have It All Mapped Out, You Aren't Paying Attention Or You've Anesthetized Yourself With Booze Or Drugs, Or With A Comforting Ideology. And If You Don't Think Life's A Comedy - Well, Friend, You Might As Well Hurry Along To That Burial. The Rest Of Us Need People With Whom We Can Laugh. -odd Thomas -odd Apocalypse By Dean Koontz Pg 30 Chapter 4

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

Alliteration Seems To Offend People.

When We Don't Allow Ourselves To Hope, We Don't Allow Ourselves To Have Purpose. Without Purpose, Without Meaning, Life Is Dark. We've No Light Within, And We're Just Living To Die.

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.

What Does Worry Accomplish Except To Breed More Worry?

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

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.

Not An Insult Sweetie. That Was A Thirteen Word Kiss.

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

Is Rule Of Thumb In Writing Game: If Story Requires Many Long Descriptions Of Smells So Vile That Will Give Reader Nausea, Is Not Likely To Find Publisher.

Hope, However, Isn't All That's Needed To Achieve Change. Hope Is A Hand Extended, But Two Hands Are Required To Be Pulled Out Of This Deep Hole. The Second Hand Was Faith.

I've Not Seen In My Lifetime Any Politician Who Is A Heroic Figure. The Manipulation That All Politicians Use On One Level Or Another Is So Transparent.

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.

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

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

The Hatred Of Truth Is The Taproot Of Violence.

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.

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

The Broom Wasn't As Comforting As A Flamethrower Would Have Been, But It Was Better Than A Mop And Certainly More Threatening Than A Feather Duster.

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

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

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

To A Predator, Fear Indicates Weakness.

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

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.

I Am No Theologian. I Would Not Be Surprised, However, If Heaven Proved To Be A Cozy Kitchen, Where Delicious Treats Appeared In The Oven And In The Refrigerator Whenever You Wanted Them, And Where The Cupboards Were Full Of Good Books.

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

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

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.

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

We Yearn For Tomorrow And The Progress That It Represents. But Yesterday Was Once Tomorrow, And Where Was Progress In It? Or We Yearn For Yesterday, For What Was Or What Might Have Been. But As We Are Yearning, The Present Is Becoming The Past, So The Past Is Nothing But Our Yearning For Second Chances.

All I Asked Was That I Be Spared Surprises, Although, In This World Of Six Billion Souls, All Acting With Free Will And Too Many With Audacity, Surprises Are Inevitable, Too Few Of Them Are The Kind That Make You Smile And That Lift Your Heart.

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

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.

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.

But Victimhood Was Seductive, A Release From Responsibility And Caring. Fear Would Be Transmuted Into Weary Resignation; Failure Would No Longer Generate Guilt But, Instead, Would Spawn A Comforting Self-pity.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Intuition Is Seeing With The Soul.

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

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, And These Were Apparently Good Enough That They Had Not Felt The Need For Razor Wire At The Top. I Crested The Fence, Threw Myself Into The Yard Beyond, Fell, Rolled To My Feet, And Ran With The Expectation Of Being Garroted By A Taut Clothesline. I Heard Panting, Looked Down, And Saw A Gold Retriever Running At My Side, Ears Flapping. The Dog Glanced Up At Me Tongue Rolling, Grinning, As Though Jazzed By The Prospect Of An Unscheduled Play Session.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Shakespeare Again. Once You Let Him Into Your Head, He Takes Up Tenancy And Will Not Leave.

We Live In God's Amusement Park.

Amusement Parks

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

There Is Nothing Fatherly About Time And What It Does To Us, Either.

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

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.

What We Do As A Society Is Seek Simple Answers.

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.

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.

Some Argued That The Youth Of Today Were Poorly Educated And Insufficiently Industrious, But One Of Them Had Sought To Validate His Generation By Spending Considerable Time And Effort Chiseling An Obscene Word In The Concrete Picnic Table, And He Had Spelled It Correctly.

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

Being Paid Well For Something You Love To Do - It's A Grace.

Something You Love

The Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.

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.

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

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

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

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.

Always, Beneath Every Apparent Chaos, Order Waits To Be Revealed.

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?

Even As A Child, She Had Preferred Night To Day, Had Enjoyed Sitting Out In The Yard After Sunset, Under The Star-speckled Sky Listening To Frogs And Crickets. Darkness Soothed. It Softened The Sharp Edges Of The World, Toned Down The Too-harsh Colors. With The Coming Of Twilight, The Sky Seemed To Recede; The Universe Expanded. The Night Was Bigger Than The Day, And In Its Realm, Life Seemed To Have More Possibilities.

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

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.

Are You Prepared For The First Wound?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Change Isn't Easy... Changing The Way You Live Means Changing What You Believe About Life. That's Hard... When We Make Our Own Misery, We Sometimes Cling To It Even When We Want So Bad To Change Because The Misery Is Something We Know. The Misery Is Comfortable.

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

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.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Primitive In Each Of Us Climbs Closer To The Surface During The Night, For The Moon Sings To It, And The Cold Void Between The Stars Speaks Its Language. To That Savage Self, Evil Can Look Lovely In Too Little Light.

For Some, The Past Is A Chain, Each Day A Link, Raveling Backward To One Ringbolt Or Another, In One Dark Place Or Another, And Tomorrow Is A Slave To Yesterday.

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.

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.

In This Age, Lies Were The Universal Lubricant Of The Culture. A Love Of Truth And Commitment To It Were Seldom Rewarded And Were Often Punished.

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

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

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.

Sometimes There Is No Darker Place Than Our Thoughts, The Moonless Midnight Of The Mind.

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.

...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.

Pain Is A Gift. Humanity, Without Pain, Would Know Neither Fear Nor Pity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Is Music That Speaks To The Deepest Reaches Of Your Soul, And You Are Lifted Higher, Ever Higher, By The Adagio, In My Opinion More So Even Than In Any Of The Masses That Beethoven Composed.

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

When Life Hands Us A Beutiful Bouquet Of Flowers We Stare At It In Cautious Expectation Of A Bee.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

She Says What Holds Their Marriage Together Is That She Feels Too Damn Sorry For Him To Ask For A Divorce.

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.

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.

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.

Only The Human Spirit Can Act With Volition And Consciously Change Itself; It Is The Only Thing In All Creation That Is Not Entirely At The Mercy Of Forces Outside Itself.

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.

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

Happiness Is A Choice

Books Were This Wonderful Escape For Me Because I Could Open A Book And Disappear Into It, And That Was The Only Way Out Of That House When I Was A Kid.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

What Most People Find Important, You Do Not. This Is Wisdom. To What You Believe Is Important, You Are Ready To Give Your Mind, Heart, And Soul. This Is Grace.

Because God Is Never Cruel, There Is A Reason For All Things. We Must Know The Pain Of Loss; Because If We Never Knew It, We Would Have No Compassion For Others, And We Would Become Monsters Of Self-regard, Creatures Of Unalloyed Self-interest. The Terrible Pain Of Loss Teaches Humility To Our Prideful Kind, Has The Power To Soften Uncaring Hearts, To Make A Better Person Of A Good One.

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

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.

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

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.

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

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.

Strangely Enough, For Many Many Years I Didn't Talk About My Childhood And Then When I Did I Got A Ton Of Mail - Literally Within A Year I Got A Couple Of Thousand Letters From People Who'd Had A Worse Childhood, A Similar Childhood, A Less-bad Childhood, And The Question That Was Most Often Posed To Me In Those Letters Was: How Did You Get Past The Trauma Of Being Raised By A Violent Alcoholic?

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

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

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 Advice For New Writers, First Of All, At Any Time In The History Of Publishing In My Experience, There Will Be Endless Number People Telling You That You Can't Do What You Are Trying To Do. You Won't Succeed, There's Something Else You Should Be Doing.

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

Books Are Packaged Dreams.

No One's Life Should Be Rooted In Fear. We Are Born For Wonder, For Joy, For Hope, For Love, To Marvel At The Mystery Of Existence, To Be Ravished By The Beauty Of The World, To Seek Truth And Meaning, To Acquire Wisdom, And By Our Treatment Of Others To Brighten The Corner Where We Are.

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

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

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

We Are All The Walking Wounded In A World That Is A War Zone. Everything We Love Will Be Taken From Us, Everything, Last Of All Life Itself. Yet Everywhere I Look, I Find Great Beauty In This Battlefield, And Grace And The Promise Of Joy.

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

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.

You Have To Stop Worrying About Looking Foolish, 'cause Fear Of Being Humiliated Really Limits You.

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 Can Do What I Need To Do. I Can Get Where I Want To Go, No Matter How Hard It Is.

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

All Human Lives Are So Profoundly And Intricately Entwined-those Dead, Those Living, Those Generations Yet To Come-that The Fate Of All Is The Fate Of Each, And The Hope Of Humanity Rests In Every Heart And In Every Pair Of Hands.

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

Pure, Hard-core Liberals Believe In A Superior Race. They Think They're It. They Believe They're More Intelligent Than The General Run Of Mankind, Better Suited Than The Little People Are To Manage The Little People's Lives. They Think They Have The One True Vision, The Ability To Solve All The Moral Dilemmas Of The Century. They Prefer Big Government Because That Is The First Step To Totalitarianism, Toward Unquestioned Rule By The Elite. And Of Course They See Themselves As The Elite.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Death Came, Death Went, But Commerce Flowed Eternal.

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.

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