01c. 1945 ADIn memory, she lived and moved and laughed, but all that a photograph could offer was one frozen moment of a life.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
02c. 1945 ADMaybe magic and love, together, can achieve what magic alone cannot.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
03c. 1945 ADIn 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 / quote ↗
04c. 1945 ADYou can't fix things with a hug, but you can't make them any worse either.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
05c. 1945 ADEach smallest act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time --affecting lives unknown to the one who’s generous spirit, was the source of this good echo. Because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage, years later, and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
06c. 1945 ADBeauty that steals the heart is often imperfect, suggests grace and kindness, and inspires tenderness more than it incites lust.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
07c. 1945 ADI warned myself against the danger of compassion in this case. How easy it would be to imagine the traumas of childhood that might have deformed her into the moral monster she had become, and then to convince myself that those traumas could be balanced - and their effects reversed - by sufficient acts of kindness.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
09c. 1945 ADHe wondered why it was easier to believe in a malevolent spirit than in a benign one. Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared eternal life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
10c. 1945 ADWere you always such a snake," the child asked, "or did you grow into what you are?Dean Koontz / quote ↗
11c. 1945 ADThat 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 / quote ↗
12c. 1945 ADThere’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
13c. 1945 ADThere's more to me than you see, another me down inside somewhere, full of hate, ready to hurt, cut, smash, or if maybe there's no Other and there's just me alone, then I'm not the person I thought I was, I'm something twisted and terrible, terrible.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
14c. 1945 ADIn 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 / quote ↗
15c. 1945 ADI am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning. As does death.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
16c. 1945 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
17c. 1945 ADShe 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 / quote ↗
18c. 1945 ADI 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 / quote ↗
19c. 1945 ADShe would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
20c. 1945 ADHer stare was direct and unwavering, full of confidence earned from painful experience...Dean Koontz / quote ↗
21c. 1945 ADLife without meaningcannot be borne.We find a missionto which we're sworn--or answer the callof Death's dark horn.Without a gleaningof purpose in life,we have no vision,we live in strife,--or let blood fallon a suicide knife.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
22c. 1945 ADWe don't have time for such uncertainty because it reliably breeds indecision, and indecision is one of the mothers of failure.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
23c. 1945 ADGood fences make good neighbors, and these were apparently good enough that they had not felt the need for razor wire at the top. I crested the fence, threw myself into the yard beyond, fell, rolled to my feet, and ran with the expectation of being garroted by a taut clothesline.I heard panting, looked down, and saw a gold retriever running at my side, ears flapping. The dog glanced up at me tongue rolling, grinning, as though jazzed by the prospect of an unscheduled play session.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
24c. 1945 ADToo much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.Dean Koontz / quote ↗
