Dean Koontz Quotes

A part of me knew... from the moment I saw her,her death would have been one wound too many that day.

~ Dean Koontz

The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded.

~ Dean Koontz

Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in striving than in winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.

~ Dean Koontz

Years later, after other experiences with dogs, I wondered if their species were shaped and charmed to serve as four-legged guides able to assist in leading humanity back to our first—and lost—home. By the example of their joy and humility, by wanting nothing more than food and play and love, by the deep satisfaction that they take from those humble things, they belie all creeds of power and fame. Although they have the teeth to tear, it is by swish of tail and yearning eyes that they most easily get what they want.

~ Dean Koontz

Although much that was precious has been taken from me in this life, I have reason to remain an optimist. After the numerous tight scrapes I've been through, by now I should have lost one leg, three fingers, one buttock, most of my teeth, an ear, my spleen, and my sense of fun. But here I am.

~ Dean Koontz

Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don't expect too much, enjoy what you have.

~ Dean Koontz

There's no tragedy in nature, only process -- and therefore no triumph, either.

~ Dean Koontz

Anyway, in those years, I was happy, as to one extent or another I have always been happy. The forest was not a wilderness to me, but served instead as my private garden, comforting in spite of its vastness, and endlessly mysterious.The more familiar a place becomes, the more mysterious it becomes, as well, if you are alert to the truth of things. I have found this to be the case all of my life.

~ Dean Koontz

I don't desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home — and my sanity depends on it.

~ Dean Koontz

I don't desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home- and my sanity depends on it.

~ Dean Koontz

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 adn fragile that she wondered how she could ever protect him, and renewed fear rose in her.

~ Dean Koontz

All she wanted was love with respect, respect was so important to her, and I could give her that.

~ Dean Koontz

To get through life successfully, body and soul must translate each other correctly more often than not.

~ Dean Koontz

I've been badly scared myself, badly, for quite a few years now. You learn to live with it.

~ Dean Koontz

As a writer, Bibi, you could be a doctor of the soul.

~ Dean Koontz

I survive by finding the sweet spot between reason and unreason, between the rational and irrational.

~ Dean Koontz

Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.

~ Dean Koontz

...on a subconscious level we're aware that time isn't enduring, that it is not a required condition of our existence, that there comes a point when we will have no need of it.

~ Dean Koontz

More likely, they would just cease to exist.That's death.No, it's different. Death leaves a corps.

~ Dean Koontz

Chronologically she is twelve, but emotionally she is older, and intellectually older still.

~ Dean Koontz

Eventually he understood that he was crying for himself. He was ashamed of the man whom he had become, mourning the man whom he had expected to be when he'd been a boy.

~ Dean Koontz

But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every monument to dust. The only that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting.

~ Dean Koontz

When men in power decide that things need to be rebalanced at any cost, the violence is never brief and never really directed solely at the imbalance that supposedly inspired it. The rule of law becomes the rule of violence. Revenge becomes a synonym for justice. No city is safe from such horror, no nation, no time in all of history. Be ready to recognize the moment. Be always ready.

~ Dean Koontz

From their perspective, however, torture might make a sort of cockeyed sense if it was ritualistic, part of a ceremony that this fraternity of the demented required of themselves when they murdered one of their own.

~ Dean Koontz

Three more words. Be happy. Persevere.

~ Dean Koontz

Perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.

~ Dean Koontz

Although enlightened people know that an extreme phobia wasn't a form of madness, hey could not help but regard it as odd.

~ Dean Koontz

Holy men tell us life is a mystery.They embrace that concept happily.But some mysteries bite and barkand come to get you in the dark.

~ Dean Koontz

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.

~ Dean Koontz

When I woke up and the dark wasn't gone yet, and the dark seemed so big, then she sang soft and made the dark small again.That is the best of all things we can do for one another: Make the dark small.

~ Dean Koontz

Her exceptional beauty also helps her to keep her secrets. 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.

~ Dean Koontz

Now, sprawled comfortably in his motel bed, Anson Sharp enjoyed the sleep of the amoral, which is far deeper and more restful than the sleep of the just, the righteous, and the innocent.

~ Dean Koontz

I am amazed that there are still nights when I sleep well.

~ Dean Koontz

Sleep is a kind of peace, and I have not yet earned peace.

~ Dean Koontz

Sometimes enlightenment descends upon you when you least expect it...

~ Dean Koontz

I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather...the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it-very loose, the line of the law-so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are always-short of the blantant theft or cold-blooded murder-safely on the right side.

~ Dean Koontz

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.

~ Dean Koontz

The sky is deep, the sky is dark. The light of the stars is o damn stark/When I look up, I fill with fear, if all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead stars and empty space...Well, I see no reason to persevere, no reason to laugh or shed a tear, no reason to sleep and none to wake/ No promises to keep and none to make. And so at night I still raise my eyes tos tudy the clear but mysterious skies that arch avove us, cold as stone. Are you there God? Are we alone?

~ Dean Koontz

Duty is a good thing, a calling without which no civilization can survive, but it is also a weight and chain that sometimes seems sure to sink you to the airless bottom of a dark pool

~ Dean Koontz

In the war, to survive, you had to be responsible every minute of every day, unhesitatingly responsible for yourself, for your every action. You had to be responsible for your buddies, too, because survival wasn't something that could be achieved alone. That's maybe the one positive thing about fighting in a war - it clarifies your thinking and makes you realize that a sense of responsibility is what separates good men from the damned.

~ Dean Koontz