Dean Koontz Quotations

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.

Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.

Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.

Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.

I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

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.

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

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.

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.

I think the world is full of evil people. I think in some ways we're in more danger now than before.

I have avoided becoming stale by putting a little water on the plate, lying on the plate, and having myself refreshed in a toaster oven for 23 minutes once every month.

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.

If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored.

What we do as a society is seek simple answers.

My wife is my first audience. She's a tough lady, so I can't say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.

Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.

A fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.

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.

Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror.

I have been reading Stephen King since CARRIE and hope to read him for many years to come.

I think it's perfectly just to refuse service to anyone based on behavior, but not based on race or religion.

I think it's the people who have no doubt that every word they put down is gold that probably don't write very well.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

Your mind always does worse things than people can show in a movie.

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.

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.

The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.

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.

If someone wrote it and it had a peculiar twist, I've read it.

If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that’s more than just entertainment-w hich is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.

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.

In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings.

I don't find slashing and blood flying everywhere to be scary. I just find it repulsive.

If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

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.

We're not here to leave a mark, bro. Monuments, legacies, marks - that's where we always go wrong. We're here to revel in the world, to soak in the awesomeness of it, to enjoy the ride. The world's maximum perfect as it is, beauty from horizon to horizon. Any mark any of us tries to leave - hell, it's only graffitti. Any mark anyone leaves is no better than vandalism.

The hard rain nailed the night to the city.

Duty doesn't need to call; it only needs to whisper. And if you heed the call, no matter what happens, you have no need for regret." Odd Thomas

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.

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

At the core of every ordered system, whether a family or a factory, is chaos. But in the whirl of every chaos lies a strange order, waiting to be found.

What will happen will happen. There is time for miracles until there is no more time, but time has no end.

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.

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.

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.

I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental.

The desire to write well can never be fulfilled without hard work.

I was looking forward to having a halo. It would make such a convenient reading lamp.

What really holds their marriage together are mutual respect of an awesome depth, a shared sense of humor, faith that they were brought together by a force greater than themselves, and a love so unwavering and pure that it is sacred.

Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.

Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

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.

Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

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

Evil was coming. I wondered whose face it would be wearing.

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

Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us." If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.

Rub-a-dub-dub. Cerebrum in a tub.

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

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

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.

The wives of Spartans are the secret pillars of the world."--Odd Thomas

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.

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.

Is there some meaning to this life? What purpose lies behind the strife? Whence do we come, where are we bound? These cold questions echo and resound through each day, each lonely night. We long to find the splendid light that will cast a revelatory beam upon the meaning of the human dream. Courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy lift us above the simple beasts and define humanity.

She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.

Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.

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.

In the end, it's all about perseverance.

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.

Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself.

I am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning...as does death.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When tempest tossed, embrace chaos

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.

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.

To a predator, fear indicates weakness.

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.