Phantoms Dean Koontz Quotes

Although she had resisted this knowledge all her life, had lived determinedly in the future focused there by ambition, she understood at last that this was the real condition of humanity: The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simmple, sel-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future. ~ Dean Koontz

This is nuts," Travis said, putting A Tale of Two Cities back where he'd gotten it. "I'm giving plot synopses to a dog, for God's sake!" Dropping ~ Dean Koontz

Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity. ~ Dean Koontz

The life of a seamstress is no smaller than the life of a queen, the life of a child with Down syndrome no less filled with promise than the life of a philosopher, because the only significant measure of your life is the positive effect you have on others, either by conscious acts of will or by unconscious example. ~ 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 had warmed me all my life. ~ Dean Koontz

The sky is deep, the sky is dark. The light of the stars is o damn stark/When I look up, I fill with fear, if all we have is what lies here, this lonely world, this troubled place, then cold dead stars and empty space ... Well, I see no reason to persevere, no reason to laugh or shed a tear, no reason to sleep and none to wake/ No promises to keep and none to make. And so at night I still raise my eyes tos tudy the clear but mysterious skies that arch avove us, cold as stone. Are you there God? Are we alone? ~ Dean Koontz

Beyond the slumpstone wall lay a backyard, a swimming pool. Dappled with morning light and tree shadows, the water glimmered in shades of blue from sapphire to turquoise, as might a trove of jewels left by long-dead pirates who had sailed a sea since vanished. ~ Dean Koontz

We are in this boot camp to learn, that if we don't persevere through all this world's obstacles and all its wounds, we won't earn our next life of great adventure. ~ Dean Koontz

I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion. ~ Dean Koontz

Love 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 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 ... Most good people have a sense of humor. The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are mostly humorless. ~ Dean Koontz

Grief is a healthy emotion, and it's healthy to embrace it. By accepting loss, we clarify our values and the meaning of our lives. ~ Dean Koontz

... life is complicated, but if it wasn't complicated, it would be a roller coaster on a flat track. Wouldn't be a ride worth taking. And, yeah, we never fully know ourselves, but that means we're mysterious enough to interest one another. And if we fully knew ourselves in this world, what reason would we have to still be here ? ~ Dean Koontz

A wasted opportunity wasn't just a missed chance, but was a wound to your future. Miss too many opportunities, thus sustaining too many wounds, and you wouldn't have a future at all. ~ 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

Centuries-old ways of looking at the world, centuries-old rules, are jettisoned seemingly overnight. Traditions are mocked and banished. A man - or woman - with an unstable mind sees things falling apart. 'The center cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.' To a psychopath, anarchy is exciting, the chaotic world reflects his chaotic interior life, confirms his conviction that anything should be allowed, that he can rightly do whatever he wants. ~ Dean Koontz

Rub-a-dub-dub. Cerebrum in a tub. ~ Dean Koontz

Laguna prided itself on being an artist's colony that accepted all classes and cultures, not merely tolerating eccentrics but delighting in them. ~ Dean Koontz

Scourges assumed authority they had not been granted. They made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in greater numbers than were absolutely necessary to save themselves and the innocents
who needed their protection. Scourges transgressed against social and sacred order ... Scourges themselves are always scourged. ~ Dean Koontz

Life had not taught me to distrust ministers, but it had taught me to trust no one more than dogs. ~ Dean Koontz

But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every monument to dust. The only thing that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting. ~ Dean Koontz

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

Talking about a problem sometimes makes it worse. ~ Dean Koontz

Most people can't wait to leave kidhood behind. But I keep the kid in my heart, you know, and once in a while she gets out. It's a writer thing. The past is material. You never want to forget it, how it was, how it felt. ~ Dean Koontz

He drops the pistol into the right-hand pocket of his raincoat. He is not expecting trouble. Nevertheless, he goes nowhere unarmed. One can never be too careful. Besides, opportunities often arise unexpectedly. In ~ Dean Koontz

in this dangerous time when shadows cast shadows of their own, when darkness often passed for light, the just and the unjust wore the same face. Weaving ~ Dean Koontz

Whiskers of the cat, Webbed toes on my swimming dog; God is in the details. ~ Dean Koontz

Hand-to-hand combat with three hundred pounds of screaming monkey menace is not my idea of a fair fight. My idea of a fair fight is one unarmed, toothless, nearsighted old monkey versus me with a Blackhawk attack helicopter. ~ Dean Koontz

There 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 Koontz

Self discipline and respect come naturally when you truly believe that your life has a spiritual dimension and that you are carefully designed to fulfill a destiny.
Never leave a friend behind ... they are all we have to get us through this life ... and are the only thing we hope to see in the next ... ~ Dean Koontz

Time doesn't, as advertised, heal all wounds. Although the wrenching immediacy of grief eventually passed, the settled sorrow that replaced it might in its own way be even more intense. ~ Dean Koontz

I 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 Koontz

risible. In the Community, none ~ Dean Koontz

What sucks the worst is ... this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't. ~ Dean Koontz

I am the One, and I see all.
But the blind man in Apartment 1-A is blind in many ways, as are all human beings, even those with functioning eyes. They are blind to their folly, to their ignorance, to their history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing. ~ Dean Koontz

In certain fiction, she perceives truths that she rarely finds in nonfiction; therefore, in her quest to better understand the world and the meaning of her life, she reads those novels that suggest a world of wonders, dark and light, forever unfolding for eyes willing to see. ~ Dean Koontz