Dean Koontz

“Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The truth was stranger than the official fiction.”

“Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.”

“You 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.”

“When we make our own misery we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.”

“Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.”

“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 pride...”

“You won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.”

“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 ill...”

“People hide truths about themselves from themselves. Such self-deception is a coping mechanism, and to one extent or another, most people begin deceiving themselves when they're children.”

“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.”

“The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.”

“That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.”

“Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.”

“No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”

“For the likes of you, the path to happiness is one mean son of a bitch of a path.”

“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?”

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

“Hope wasn't a cottage industry; it was neither a product that she could manufacture like needlepoint samplers nor a substance she could secrete, in her cautious solitude, like a maple tree producing the essence of syrup. Hope was to be found in other people, by reaching out, by taking risks, by open...”

“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 divine has taken a few steps back from humankind, perhaps in revulsion, perhaps because we don't deserve to look directly upon holy beings anymore.... When the divine enters the world these days from outside of time, it manifests discreetly through children and animals.”

“Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing.”

“How obvious can it be? ... The purpose of makeup is to defy the degradations of time, and time is just a synonym for death.”

“Every palace and every work of art is only dust as yet unrealized, and time is the patient wind that will whither it all away.”

“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.”

“When tempest tossed, embrace chaos.”

“For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light. The only thing that kept the dark back was the Forever Shiny Thing that was her secret... It is a word...the word hangs on a silver chain. The word is HOPE.”

“The geometry of judgment is a circle. Hate is a snake that turns to consume itself from the tail, a circle that diminishes to a point, then to nothing. Pride is such a snake, and envy, and greed. Love, however, is a hoop, a wheel, that rolls on forever. We are rescued by those whom we have rescued....”

“All our yesterdays neatly shelved, time cataloged in drawers: News grows brittle and yellow under the library, in catacombs of paper.”

“Home was not a perfect place. But it was the only home they had and they could hope to make it better.”

“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 course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep.”

“Money and beauty are defenses against the sorrows of this world but neither can undo the past. Only time will conquer time. The way forward is the only way back to innocence and to peace.”

“No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unb...”

“What doesn't quicken dies. That's an indisputable truth of life.”

“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.”

“When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day...”

“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.”

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

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