“When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.”
“When tempest tossed, embrace chaos”
“If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored.”
“Acting is a marvelous profession ... If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don't have to think too much about your own character and motivations.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“Anger is a violent emotion, vindictive, and as dangerous to he who is driven by it as to anyone on whom it is turned.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“One man's idea of perfect order is another man's chaos.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“The destruction that barbarians leave behind has a grim fascination, doesn't it? We're reminded how thin is the veneer of civilization.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“Nearly everything that was fun, of course, was also a little dangerous: riding roller coasters, skydiving, gambling, sex.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“While life could be evaded, death could not.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“I don't mean to imply that I'm afraid of Death. I'm just not ready to go out on a date with him.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which we must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness and despair.”
“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.... The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are the most humorless, though in the movies they frequently get some of the best lines.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“There's evil in the world, all right. Being aware of it makes you a realist, not a paranoid.”
“Some people misunderstand evil and believe it will relent, and because their misplaced hope inspires dark hearts to dream darker dreams, they are the fathers and mothers of all wars. Evil does not relent; it must be defeated. And even when defeated, uprooted, and purified by fire, evil leaves behind a seed that will one day germinate and, in blooming, again be misunderstood.”
Source: Odd Apocalypse: An Odd Thomas Novel
“Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“You have to stop worrying about looking foolish, 'cause fear of being humiliated really limits you.”
Source: Fear Nothing: A Novel
“Every expression of desired friendship has potential bite. Every smile reveals the teeth.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.”
“Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“We are buried when we're born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“If your work is deathwork, one weapon is not enough, just as a plumber would not answer an urgent service call with a single wrench.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“The saddest thing in the world was that human beings, for all their ardent striving and desire, could never achieve physical, emotional, or intellectual perfection. The species was doomed to imperfection; it thrashed forever in despair or denial of that fact.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“Cowards shrink from toil and peril, Vulgar souls attempt and fail; Men of mettle, nothing daunted, Persevere till they prevail.”
“Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“The true nature of the world was weirder than any bizarre fabric that anyone might weave from the warp and weft of imagination's loom.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“What does worry accomplish except to breed more worry?”
Source: Odd Apocalypse: An Odd Thomas Novel
“No one can tell you what your heart should feel.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“Humanity was drawn to turmoil and self-destruction as inevitably as the earth was drawn to complete its annual revolution of the sun.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“This world, which has the potential to be Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our arrogance, we have made it so.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“I've got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don't give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I'm no saint, the way you kid about. But I've always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It's a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You're always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don't just step off and walk in the cool grass.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“Death lies dormant in each of us and will bloom in time.”
Source: Odd Thomas: An Odd Thomas Novel
“Of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
“You know what's wrong with humanity?... The greatest gift we were given is our free will, and we keep misusing it.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“We live in God's amusement park.”
Source: Dark Rivers of the Heart/Intensity/Sole Survivor: Three Complete Novels by Dean Koontz
“In the belly of Leviathan ... one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose--if we dare.”
Source: The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd
“Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.”
Source: Velocity: A Novel
“Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.
Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them.”
“In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.”
“Your sense of responsibility to others can never be excessive.”
Source: Midnight
“The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.”
Source: Fear Nothing: A Novel
“If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap”
“Life's mysterious, strange, and full of wonders - and only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”
Source: Watchers
“Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.”
Source: Odd Thomas: An Odd Thomas Novel
“Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.”
Source: The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
“Hope, however, isn't all that's needed to achieve change. Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of this deep hole. The second hand was faith.”
Source: One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel
