100 Quotes About Odd-Thoma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All death matters."" Only to the living. Dean Koontz

She says that each of us has his or her role in life, and if we know ourselves well enough to understand what that role is, we will be happy doing nothing but what we can do best. Dean Koontz

Nothing before its time, son. Everything in its own time, to its own schedule. Dean Koontz

I never plan for the future but wander into it with a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and the hair up on the nape of my neck. Dean Koontz

Hope, love and faith are in the waiting. Dean Koontz

Waiting is one of the things that human beings cannot do well, though it is one of the essential things we must do successfully if we are to know happiness. We are impatient for the future and try to craft it with our own powers, but the future will come as it comes and will not be hurried. Dean Koontz

Waiting is one of the things that human beings cannot do well, though it is one of the essential things we must do successfully if we are to know happiness. We are impatient for the future and try to craft it with our own powers, but hte future will come as it ocmes and will not be hurried. Dean Koontz

The past cannot be redeamed. What has been and what might have been both bring us to what is. To know grief, we must be in the river of time, because grief thrives in the present and promises to be with us in the future until the end point. Only time conquers time and its burdens. There is no grief before or after time, which is all the consolation we should need. Dean Koontz

My only armor is my belief that life has meaning... 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

Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them? Dean Koontz

From birth to death we explore and seek, and in the end we arrive where we started, the past having made one great slow turn on a carousel to become our future, and if we have learned anything worth learning, the carousel will bring us to the one place we most need to be. Dean Koontz

By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I'll learn how to die, and leave the world and hope to land in light. Dean Koontz

So many things in my continuing education are learned by going where I have to go and doing what I have to do. Therefore, my only answer is: "I guess I'll find out. Dean Koontz

When I was no longer of the world, I would miss its extravagant beauty. I would miss the complex and charming layers of subterfuge by which the truth of the world's mysteries were withheld from us even as we were tantalized and enchanted by them. I would miss the kindness of good people who were compassionate when so many were pitiless, who made their way through so much corruption without being corrupted themselves, who eschewed envy in a world of envy, who eschewed greed in a world of greed, who valued truth and could not be drowned in a sea of lies, for they shone and, by the light they cast, they warmed me all my life. Dean Koontz

Translating the words on the door, he said, "Light from light." "Waste and void, waste and void. Darkness on the face of the deep, " I said. "Then God commanded light. The light of the world descends from the Everlasting Light that is God.""That is surely one thing it means, " said Romanovich. "Bit it may also mean that the visible can be born from the invisible, That matter can arise from energy that thought is a form of energy and that thought itself can be concretized into the very object that is imagined. Dean Koontz

In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the third and most constant darkness is with us everyday, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest. Dean Koontz

When you laugh at yourself, you gain perspective. Then you realize that the mistakes you made, as long as they didn't hurt anyone but yourself––well, you can forgive yourself for those. Dean Koontz

You are reformed, you may be a better man, but you are not a different man. How can you convince yourself of such a thing when you are so conversant with the theology of your faith? From one end of this life to the other, you carry with you all that you have done. Absolution grants you forgiveness for it, but does not expunge the past. The man you were still lives within you, repressed by the man you have struggled to become. . Dean Koontz

Such grief might be to them quite delicious, a delicacy. Dean Koontz

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

Virtue is imaginative, evil repetitive. Dean Koontz

My imagination is as rich as my bank account is empty. Dean Koontz

We were friends, never paramours. A lover who is enigmatic will most likely prove to be a cataclysm waiting to happen. But a charming friend whose usual warmth is raveled through moments of cool inscrutability can be an intriguing companion. Dean Koontz

In memory, she lived and moved and laughed, but all that a photograph could offer was one frozen moment of a life. Dean Koontz

In all our lives, however, there are many days when we die a little, when we are wounded by loss or failure, or by fear, or by seeing the suffering of others for whom we are able to offer only pity, for whom we are powerless to offer aid, we are beyond mercy. Dean Koontz

You can't fix things with a hug, but you can't make them any worse either. Dean Koontz

Beauty that steals the heart is often imperfect, suggests grace and kindness, and inspires tenderness more than it incites lust. Dean Koontz

Were you always such a snake, " the child asked, "or did you grow into what you are? Dean Koontz

That stormy day in the desert, however, much changed for me. We must have our goals, our dreams and we must strive for them. We are not gods, however; we do not have the power to shape every aspect of the future. And the road the world makes for us is one that teaches humility if we are willing to learn. Dean Koontz

In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning. Dean Koontz

When we hope, we usually hope for the wrong thing. We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it presents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was the progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances. Dean Koontz

She has suffered so much, and that sorrows me. But she has been strong in the face of unthinkable adversity, and that inspires me. 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

Her stare was direct and unwavering, full of confidence earned from painful experience... Dean Koontz

...because wonder admits to the existence of mystery, and the recognition of mystery in the world allows the possibility of Truth. Dean Koontz

Narcissists are everywhere in this ripe age of self-love, which amazes me because so much in life would seem to foster humility. Dean Koontz

To protect the innocent, to avoid being one of Burke's good men who do nothing, you have to accept permanent scars that cincture the heart and traumas of the mind that occasionally reopen to weep again. Dean Koontz

Darkness doesn't fall at a predictable schedule. Darkness can overwhelm you any time of the day, as you know well. Dean Koontz

There is in me a darkness that, by darkness challenged, will rise up and have its way. Dean Koontz

She is a girl who feels things strongly, and though cynics might mock her for that, I never will, as it is perhaps the best of graces: to feel deeply, to care profoundly. Dean Koontz

Not immediately able to proceed, I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace. Dean Koontz

In twenty-one years, I have not considered changing to Todd. The bizarre course of my life suggests that Odd is more suited to me, whether it was conferred by my parents with intention or fate. Dean Koontz

These days, all I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another. This is a big request to make of busy Fate, who has billions of lives to keep in constant turmoil. 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

These days, all I ask Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another. Dean Koontz

Evil travels the world in anonymity, its presence revealed only by the periodic consequences of its desires... Dean Koontz

Small-town boy meets big-time evil. Dean Koontz

Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth. Dean Koontz

Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth. The breadth of Creation makes it impossible for us to step back far enough to see the story that the tapestry tells; the intricacy of it, from the macro to the micro to the subatomic, make sit impossible for us to comprehend the megatrillions of connections between the threads in just one small fragment of the whole. Dean Koontz

...guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made. Dean Koontz

Evil never dies. It just changes faces. Dean Koontz

The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert. Dean Koontz

But the line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern Dean Koontz

Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on sighs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment. Dean Koontz

But with the morning almost gone, with seven bodachs in the recreation room, with living boneyards stalking the storm, with Death opening the door to a luge chute and inviting me to go for a bobsled ride, I didn't have time to put on a victim suit and tell the woeful tale of my sorrowful childhood. Neither time nor the inclination 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

That I had come full circle shouldn't have surprised me, for we are born into time only to be born out of it, after living through the cycles of the seasons, under stars that turn because the world turns, born into ignorance and acquiring knowledge that ultimately reveals to us our enduring ignorance: The circle is the essential pattern of our existence. Dean Koontz

I don't know if this deception qualified as a half-step down the slippery slope. I had no sensation of sliding. But of course we never notice the descent until we're rocketing along at high velocity. Dean Koontz

Although he never speaks of how or what or why, I know that his childhood was difficult, that his parents broke his heart. Books and excess poundage are his insulation against pain. Dean Koontz

Some people like to hear themselves talk, but I like to hear myself silent. Dean Koontz

Then the clarifying thing happens, and what you need to do, what you must do, is not a question, not demand more revelation than what is given, be quiet in the face of it, quiet and grateful that it has been given to you to see this, to be for even a short time aware of the extraordinary layered depths and profound beauty of the world to which we mostly blind ourselves. Dean Koontz

But the universe in its immensity is nevertheless of a piece, and what applies at one end of it applies at the other. No doubt misery, like happiness and hope, is found throughout the stars. Dean Koontz

Quantum theory tells us, Mr. Thomas, that every point in the universe is intimately connected to every other point, regardless of apparent distance. In some mysterious way, any point on a planet in a distant galaxy is as close to me as you are. Dean Koontz

As I turned to leave the tent, she said, "Don't worry. Your own mother wouldn't know you." I said, "She never has. Dean Koontz

Every journey has a destination, known or unknown. Dean Koontz

If patterns exist in our seemingly patternless lives – and they do – then the law of harmony insists that the most harmonious of all patterns, circles within circles, will most often assert itself. Dean Koontz

There will be something very wrong with any place we go. Dean Koontz

It's only life. We all get through it. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in accidents or altercations, while others skate through years with nothing worse to worry about than an occasional bad-hair day. Dean Koontz

With lead he shaded love into the woman's eyes. Dean Koontz

I suspect she must speak without emotion or otherwise entirely lose the self-control that is required to speak to me at all. 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

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