01c. 1945 ADBy 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 / quote ↗
02c. 1945 ADSo 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 / quote ↗
03c. 1945 ADIf there's nothing to learn because we know it all, what's the challenge? Why would the effort matter? What would be the point? - Odd ThomasDean Koontz / quote ↗
04c. 1945 ADOut of sight above the house, the mirror moon reflected the sun of a day not yet dawned, shining the pale light of tomorrow on the yard and on the paper birches.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
05c. 1945 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
06c. 1945 ADTranslating 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 / quote ↗
07c. 1945 ADIn 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 / quote ↗
08c. 1945 ADI'm small, I'm young - and I'm so different. You've always respected that difference, and you've always trusted it. Trust me now. There's a reason I am the way I am, and there's a reason I was born to you. There's always a reason. We belong together.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
09c. 1945 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
10c. 1945 ADYou 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 / quote ↗
11c. 1945 ADI stopped in St. Bernadette's Cemetery one of my favorite places... The trunks of six giant oaks rise like columns supporting a ceiling formed by their interlocking crowns. In the quiet space below, is laid out an aisle similar to those in any library. The gravestones are like rows of books bearing the names of those whose names have been blotted from the pages of life; who have been forgotten elsewhere but are remembered here.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
13c. 1945 ADHe lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
15c. 1945 ADGrief can destroy you—or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. “And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
16c. 1945 ADGrief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
17c. 1945 ADThere are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushly carpeted funeral parlor which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower's lonely bedroom.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
18c. 1945 ADThe secret is not to think, we think in words. And what lies beyond the reality we see is a truth that words can't contain, the secret is to feel.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
21c. 1945 ADIf one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
22c. 1945 ADYou be careful, Wizard. Interestingly eccentric friends aren't easy to find.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
23c. 1945 ADWe 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 / quote ↗
24c. 1945 ADHe's a man," Themla said."I guess that explains it.""Hairy, Neanderthalic," Thelma said, "perpetually half-crazed from excessive levels of testosterone, plagued by racial memories of the lost glory of mammoth-hunting expeditions - they're all alike.Dean Koontz / quote ↗