Quotes From "Odd Thomas" By 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

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

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

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

Her eyes were clear; she hadn't been crying. She was a cop's wife first, a woman second; she wouldn't give in to tears as long as Wyatt was fighting for his life because she was fighting with him in spirit. Dean Koontz

Most people desperately desire to believe that they are a part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread. Dean Koontz

Considering that the modern and contemporary literature taught in most universities is largely bleak, cynical, morbid, pessimistic, misanthropic dogmatism, often written by suicidal types who sooner or later kill themselves with alcohol or drugs, or shotguns, Professor Takuda was a remarkably cheerful man. Dean Koontz

He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul. Dean Koontz

The less I have, the less I can lose. Dean Koontz

You be careful, Wizard. Interestingly eccentric friends aren't easy to find. Dean Koontz

I was the worst kind of fool. When I look back on that August night, changed forever by all my wounds and all my suffering, that undamaged Odd Thomas seems like a different human being from me, immeasurably more confident than I am now, still able to hope, but not as wise, and I mourn for him. Dean Koontz

Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way. Dean Koontz

When I was a child, I first thought that these shades might be malevolent spirits who fostered evil in those people around whom they swarmed. 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. Dean Koontz

Perhaps they thought they could bring to this valley only those things they loved, leaving behind all ugliness. We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness, and misery. Dean Koontz

Although her eyes are neither golden nor heavenly blue, Terri Stambaugh has the vision of an angel, for she sees through you and knows your truest heart, but loves you anyway, in spite of all the ways that you have fallen from a state of grace. Dean Koontz

You can change the road you take, but sometimes it can bend back to lead you straight to that same stubborn fate. Dean Koontz

Fate isn't a straight road, " I said, becoming the oracle that earlier in the day I had declined to be for her. "There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path. Dean Koontz

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

We ate food that wasn't healthy. We let dirty dishes stack up in the sink. We slept too much. We talked about everything, everything but the slaughter at the mall. Our past, our future. We planned. We dreamed. Dean Koontz

I'd had much practice turning my mind away from certain memories of my childhood. I could quickly dial her remembered voice from a whisper to a silence. Dean Koontz

..the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another. 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

Three more words. Be happy. Persevere. Dean Koontz

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

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded. Dean Koontz

People scare me more than anything, for I know too well the savagery of which humankind is capable. Dean Koontz

I had not asked to be born. Only to be loved. Dean Koontz

If she fully embraced life with all its conflicts, she would suffer a breakdown. Dean Koontz

From all these friends, I could not escape learning some of the statistics that I preferred not to know. Forty-one people at the mall had been wounded. Nineteen had died. Everyone said it was a miracle that only nineteen perished. What has gone wrong with our world when nineteen dead can seem like any kind of miracle? Dean Koontz

Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it, " he instructed before I began to write, "because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope. Dean Koontz

Well, Mr Thomas, while I'm in favour of education, I couldn't in good conscience recommend a university career in anything but the hard sciences. As a working environment, the rest of academia is a sewer of irrationality, hate mongering, envy, and self-interest. I'm getting out the moment I earn my twenty-five-year pension package, and then I'm going to write novels... Dean Koontz