The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.
Dean KoontzMy wife is my first audience. She's a tough lady, so I can't say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.
Dean KoontzI've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.
Dean KoontzThere's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.
Dean KoontzIn 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 KoontzDon't tell me what's necessary, you presumptupus pup. What's necessary is whatever I wish to do, regardless of how unnecessary it might be.
Dean KoontzI can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.
Dean KoontzLove was a sacred garment, woven of a fabric so thin that it could not be seen, yet so strong that even mighty death could not tear it, a garment that could not be frayed by use, that brought warmth into what would otherwise be an intolerable, cold world- but at times love could also be as heavy as chain mail. Bearing the burden of love, on those occasions when it was a solemn weight, made it more precious when, in better times, it caught the wind in sleeves like wings, and lifted you.
Dean KoontzNot all popular novelists are good, but all good novelists are, sooner or later, popular.
Dean KoontzThat was interesting, riding in the trunk," Milo said, "but I wouldn't want to do it again.
Dean KoontzI love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs.
Dean KoontzGiven 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 KoontzLoving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself.
Dean KoontzPure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite.
Dean Koontzwe must seize life because we never know how much of it remains for us, that faith is the antidote to despair and that laughter is the music of faith.
Dean KoontzThe selfless love that we give to others, to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest. We carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope.
Dean KoontzAs an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it very loose, the line of the law so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.
Dean KoontzBlizzards, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us.
Dean KoontzThere are thousands of proteins in the cells, some of them very large chains of molecules. And the cell doesn't function if one of those chains of molecules isn't there, and you start looking at the complexity of life and the mystery of life, and then start thinking about things like the twenty universal constants, that if any one of them from Plank's minimum to the mass of a proton, if one of them is the tiniest bit off, there would be no life or possibility of it in the universe.
Dean KoontzThe word impossible contains the word possible' What's that-- some Zen thing?' I think Star Trek. Mr. Spock.
Dean KoontzIn the wind, the trees, like agitated lions preparing to roar, shook their great green manes.
Dean KoontzLife's mysterious, strange, and full of wonders - and only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.
Dean KoontzOne of the things I like enormously about Bob Weinstein is that that he's the only studio head I have ever known who will change his mind and say he was wrong.
Dean KoontzNo, if there's any ultimate redemption, it would be because I passed though your life without scarring you, and did not diminish who you are.
Dean KoontzLoyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.
Dean KoontzThere are days when it seems to me that in literature the most convincing depiction of the world in which we live is to be found in the phantasmagorical kingdom through which Lewis Carroll took Alice on a tour.
Dean KoontzLife had not taught me to distrust ministers, but it had taught me to trust no one more than dogs.
Dean KoontzHuman cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.
Dean KoontzFire, ice, asteroids and pole shifts are bogeymen with which we distract ourselves from the real threat of our time. In an age when everyone invents his own truth, there is no community, only factions. Without community, there can be no consensus to resist the greedy, the envious, the power-mad narcissists who seize control and turn the institutions of civilization into a series of doom machines.
Dean Koontz