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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.

-Dean Koontz

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You've Taught Me That

Dean Koontz

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Would Not Cry. I Do Not Cry. How Bitter Do You Risk Becoming By Swallowing Too Many Tears?

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

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Fear Is A Hammer, And When The People Are Beaten Finally To The Conviction That Their Existence Hangs By A Frayed Thread, They Will Be Led Where They Need To Go.

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.

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

Creating A Family In This Turbulent World Is An Act Of Faith, A Wager That Against All Odds There Will Be A Future, That Love Can Last, That The Heart Can Triumph Against All Adversities And Even Against The Grinding Wheel Of Time.

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

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.

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

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

Readers Will Stay With An Author, No Matter What The Variations In Style And Genre, As Long As They Get That Sense Of Story, Of Character, Of Empathetic Involvement.

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

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.

This World, Which Has The Potential To Be Eden, Is Instead The Hell Before Hell. In Our Arrogance, We Have Made It So.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Happiness Is A Choice

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.

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.

Not Funny Ha Ha, Funny Weird.

...what Makes Humanity Beautiful Is Our Free Will, Our Individuality, Our Endless Striving In Spite Of Our Imperfection. By The Light Of The Moon Chapter 27 Page 214

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.

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.

Sometimes Waiting Is The Hardest Thing.

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

Evil Itself May Be Relentless. I Will Grant You That, But Love Is Relentless Too. Friendship Is A Relentless Force. Family Is A Relentless Force. Faith Is Relentless Force. The Human Spirit Is Relentless, And The Human Heart Outlasts - And Can Defeat - Even The Most Relentless Force Of All, Which Is Time.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

The Problem With Movies And Books Is They Make Evil Look Glamorous, Exciting, When It's No Such Thing. It's Boring And It's Depressing And It's Stupid. Criminals Are All After Cheap Thrills And Easy Money, And When They Get Them, All They Want Is More Of The Same, Over And Over. They're Shallow, Empty, Boring People Who Couldn't Give You Five Minutes Of Interesting Conversation If You Had The Piss-poor Luck To Be At A Party Full Of Them. Maybe Some Can Be Monkey-clever, Some Of The Time, But They Aren't Hardly Ever Smart.

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

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

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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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.

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.

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

Books Are Packaged Dreams.

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 She Possessed Any Memory Whatsoever Of The Days When She'd Been Whole, Her Shattered Recollections Were Scattered Across The Darkscape Of Her Mind In Fragments So Minuscule That She Could No More Easily Piece Them Together Than She Could Gather From The Beach All The Tiny Chips Of Broken Seashells, Worn To Polished Flakes By Ages Of Relentless Tides, And Reassemble Them Into Their Original Architectures.

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

The Truth Was Stranger Than The Official Fiction.

Fate Cannot Be Sidestepped Or Outrun.

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

There Are No Explanations For Human Evil. Only Excuses.

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

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

Dogs Are One Of Those Things That Make You Happy And Make You Wonder.

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

More To The Point, I Know Why Soldiers, Home From War, Seldom Tell Their Families About Their Exploits In More Than General Terms. We Who Survive Must Go On In The Names Of Those Who Fall, But If We Dwell Too Much On The Vivid Details Of What We've Witnessed Of Man's Inhumanity To Man, We Simply Can't Go On. Perseverance Is Impossible If We Don't Permit Ourselves To Hope.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Of All The Things We Can Feel With Our Minds And Bodies, Severe Pain Is The Purest, For It Drives Everything Else From Our Awareness And Focuses Us As Perfectly As We Can Ever Be Focused.

What Has Been Is No More. Change Has Come.

Like All Of Us In This Storm Between Birth And Death, I Can Wreak No Great Changes On The World, Only Small Changes For The Better, I Hope, In The Lives Of Those I Love.

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

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

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.

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.

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

People Who Go To Work Every Day, Make Sacrifices To Raise Families, And Get Through Life Without Hurting Other People If They Can Help It-those Are The Real Heros.

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

Infinite Universe

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.

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.

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

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.

His Blue Eyes Were Seas Where Sorrow Sailed.

The Things We Worry About The Most Are Never The Things That Bite Us. The Sharpest Teeth Always Take Their Nip Of Us When We Are Looking The Other Way.

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.

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.

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.

A Scar Is Not Always A Flaw. Sometimes A Scar May Be Redemption Inscribed In The Flesh, A Memorial To Something Endured, To Something Lost.

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

We Live In God's Amusement Park.

Amusement Parks

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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.

Ignorance Isn't Bliss, But Sometimes Ignorance Makes It Possible For Us To Sleep At Night.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Life Is A Train Ride, And At The Many Stations Along The Route, People Important To Us Debark, Never To Get Aboard Again, Until By The End Of The Journey, We Sit In A Passenger Car Where Most Of The Seats Are Empty.

No Degree Of Prosperity Can Be Sufficient To Eliminate All Misfortune, And Sloth Is Impervious To Opportunity.

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 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 Functions Of Intellect Are Insufficient Without Courage, Love, Friendship, Compassion And Empathy.

Friendship Love

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.

The Hard Rain Nailed The Night To The City.

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.

Life Had Not Taught Me To Distrust Ministers, But It Had Taught Me To Trust No One More Than Dogs.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Please, Don't Torture Me With Cliches. If You're Going To Try To Intimidate Me, Have The Courtesy To Go Away For A While, Acquire A Better Education, Improve Your Vocabulary, And Come Back With Some Fresh Metaphors.

Modesty Is Related To Diffidence, Diffidence Is Related To Shyness, Shyness Is A Synonym For Timidity, Timidity Is A Characteristic Of The Meek, The Meek Do Not Inherit The Earth, They Serve Those Who Are Self Confident And Self Assertive.

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.

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.

The Biggest Advice Is Being True To What You Want To Do. Don't Worry If Other People Understand It Or Don't Understand It. If What You're Doing Has Merit, It Will Find Its Way.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Day We Make Our Way Through A Moral Forest, Along Pathways Ever Branching. Often We Get Lost. When The Array Of Paths Before Us Is So Perplexing That We Can't Make A Choice, Or Won't, We Can Hope That We Will Be Given A Sign To Guide Us. A Reliance On Signs, However, Can Lead To The Evasion Of All Moral Obligations, And Thus Earn A Terrible Judgment.

No One Can Tell You What Your Heart Should Feel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Alliteration Seems To Offend People.

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.

Little Mouse, You Were So Quick, So Bright, So Sweet, So Full Of Life. And You Still Are Everything You Were Then. None Of It’s Lost Forever. All That Promise, All That Hope, That Love And Goodness—it’s Still Inside You. No One Can Take The Gifts God Gave You. Only You.

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.

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.

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

Your Sense Of Responsibility To Others Can Never Be Excessive.

Responsibility To Others

Sense Of Responsibility

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

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.

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.

Life's Mysterious, Strange, And Full Of Wonders - And Only A Fool Withdraws From It Willingly And Lets It Pass Him By.

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

I Believe That I Was A Dog In A Past Life. That's The Only Thing That Would Explain Why I Like To Snack On Purina Dog Chow.

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

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

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

In 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

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.

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.

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

Something You Love

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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