200+ Quotes & Sayings By Dean Koontz

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 unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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 who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp — and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

My parents didn't raise me to ask God for blessings or benefits. For guidance, yes. For the strength to do the right thing, yes. Not for a winning lottery number, not for love or health, or happiness. Prayer is not a gimme list; God isn't Santa Claus. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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 opening her fortress heart. Dean Koontz

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 be brave enough to muster. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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. The saved become the saviors of their saviors. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

I am the One, and I see all. But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

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 Dean Koontz

Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries. Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them. Dean Koontz

It's so damn hard to bloom... to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it's hard. Desire to change isn't enough. Or desperation. Couldn't be done without...love, Dean Koontz

Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be. People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks. Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you get bored. Beat everything with a stick-boring. Dean Koontz

...any talent - whether to write songs or to write novels...came with the obligation to use it to the fullest of one's ability, with a fierce commitment barely distinguishable from neurotic obsession.... In fact...commitment to the point of obsession wasn't merely an obligation but a necessity... Dean Koontz

Art is the only answer to chaos and the void. Dean Koontz

...what makes humanity beautiful is our free will, our individuality, our endless striving in spite of our imperfection. B Y THE LIGHT OF THE MOONChapter 27 Page 214 Dean Koontz

...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. Dean Koontz

A high degree of intelligence yes in no other creature in the natural world. That's why nature shuns us and why we subconsciously hate her and seek to obliterate her. High intelligence leads to the concept of progress. Progress leads to nuclear weapons, bio-engineering chaos and ultimately to annihilation. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

He would pray...for everyone who knew pain, which meant everyone who wore a human face. Dean Koontz

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself. Dean Koontz

I'd always had an ear for beauty, and maybe I'd had an eye for it as well, but until that day, I'd not recognized that the truth in great music could be found also in great art, that the heart could be lifted and the mind sharpened equally by both. Dean Koontz

Do not doubt the beauty of your heart. Dean Koontz

Whatever happens here, trust your heart. It's as true as any compass. Dean Koontz

In even a clear heart, some righteous acts of the harder kind can stir up a sediment of guilt, but that is not a bad thing. If allowed to be, the heart is self-policing, and a reasonable measure of guilt guards against corruption. Dean Koontz

His resiliency was not the resiliency of the dumb but of a lamb who can remember hurt but cannot sustain the anger or the bitterness that brittles the heart. Dean Koontz

Sometimes it seems that to exit this world, they must go through my heart, leaving me scarred and sore. Dean Koontz

She never had much in this life, but with the simplest things, she made her corner of the world as beautiful as any king's palace. We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts. Dean Koontz

This isn't a reasoned response to a configuration of stars, but the heart cannot flourish on logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you don't overdose Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

Everyone thinks his family is strange, " Del said, scratching Scootie behind the ears, "but it's just that... because we're closer to the people we love, we tend to see them through a magnifying glass, through a thicker lens of emotion, and we exaggerate their eccentricities. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

Strange how the deepest part of us isn't able to speak more clearly to the part of us that lives only here in the shallows of the world. 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. Dean Koontz

And because we have been given thought, will, and imagination, albeit on a human scale, we too have this power to create. Dean Koontz

Then perhaps you shouldn't sleep. The imagination has terrifying power. Dean Koontz

A sixth sense is a miraculous thing, which in itself suggests a supernatural order. The human intellect, however, for all its power and triumphs, is largely formed by this world and is therefore corruptible. Dean Koontz

...it will be a world made not bright but brighter, not clean but cleaner. Dean Koontz

Even if there are moments during the day when all seems normal and when every action of your own and of those around you seems to be unremarkable, the appearance of ordinariness is an illusion, and just below the placid surface, the world is seething. Dean Koontz

Knowing the names of things is a way to pay respect to the beauty of the world... Dean Koontz

It's immeasurably easier to live in a world that's all surfaces, that means nothing and demands nothing of you. Dean Koontz

It's a world of sorrow, Oddie, because we make it so. Dean Koontz

A broken thing can't fix itself. Dean Koontz

Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than a monk, you have more opportunities than you might have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it. Dean Koontz

Remember, there are cookies waiting here for you. Dean Koontz

Acknowledge your fear, odd one. Fearlessness is for the insane and the arrogant. You are neither. Those who rely on you for their lives will be well served only if you fear what you should fear. You are a unique soul, a child of grace, but you can still fail yourself and others. Dean Koontz

If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don't yet know the world for what it is. Dean Koontz

Blood has an oder faint but distinct, of conceit and modesty, of courage and cowardice, of charity and greed, of faith and doubt, in short the fragrance of what we might have been and the smell of what we are... Dean Koontz

Life had been hard on this girl, Jacob, but she had enough courage for an army. Dean Koontz

Stormy Llewellyn, a woman of unconventional views, believes instead that our passage through this world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to evil are evaluated at the end of our days here, and that if we come up to muster, we will be conscripted into an army of souls engaged in some great mission in the next world. Those who fail the test simply cease to exist. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

...the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know. Dean Koontz

We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable. Dean Koontz

Where does fiction end and reality begin? Dean Koontz

Human beings not only can't bear too much reality, we flee from reality when someone doesn't force us close enough to the fire to feel the heat on our faces. Dean Koontz

In his mind he saw them standing with the tips of their organs pressed together ejaculating into each other's penis. Dean Koontz

If you're going to keep the music in you, Jonah, you've got to play a little bit every day purely for pleasure. Otherwise, you'll lose the joy of it, and if you lose the joy, you won't sound good to those who know piano - or to yourself. Dean Koontz

Our culture sentimentalizes children, and we forget one of the things that we should most remember from that time of our lives: Children know that this world can be hard on them, harder than it is on adults. They are physically weaker than adults, financially dependent, and in times of danger, nothing clarifies our thinking more than an awareness of our extreme vulnerability. Dean Koontz

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. Dean Koontz

Most people regarded Psychology as a science. Some called it a soft science, but those making such a distinction grew fewer by the year. Dean Koontz

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it. Dean Koontz