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Quote by Dean Koontz

“And because it was so wonderful, I slipped back down into that dream of dogs and children and beautiful people who met my eyes and knew me in full, knew me and did not reject me.”

Quote by Dean Koontz

Work

Deeply Odd

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Author

Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz

Renowned American author known for his suspense and horror novels. He has been writing since the 1970s and his works have been widely popular, winning numerous international awards. more

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“On the Flight Deck this afternoon, a young plane captain, his mind obviously preoccupied with other matters, walked directly in front of an F-8 intake as the bird was turning up. He was instantly sucked off his feet and pulled down into the jet turbine tunnel. Fortunately, someone saw it happen and frantically signaled for the pilot to cut his engine. Once silenced, two squadron crew members crawled into the intake to rescue the dumb shit or what was left of him. They found his body wrapped around the generator hump directly in front of the turbine blades. He had miraculously avoided being chopped to pieces like steak in a meat grinder.”

“George continued without skipping a beat, “Modern civilisation can be traced to the Middle East and particularly the area now known as Iraq and the ongoing discoveries in and around Türkiye near Gobekli Tempe takes the possible origins of civilisations much further back to around 12000 BCE and probably even further back. When you look at ancient and modern maps, it dawns on you that the region, with what is now called Syria and Lebanon right in the centre, shaped our modern world in fundamental ways, from the food we eat to how we mastered words and numbers. Like it or not, civilisation as we know and practise today arose squarely in the Middle East. It resonates with life, learning, culture, science, war, death, and conflict. Not boring. In fact, the rest of the world cannot seem to get enough of this region, or more precisely, its black gold riches. It has dominated world affairs since possibly around 12000BCE and today still captures news media every single day. It is here where we humans learned to farm and domesticate animals. Where we learnt to count and work with metals, build houses and create staggering architectural marvel. It is at once an exotic and alluring destination with aromatic and delicious foods, but also bristling with tensions, conspiracies, and centuries old feuds that don’t end. It is inescapably a fascinating region and rightly has a claim to be the centre of the world.”

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

“Alice told Shadow a magical tale of the green wreath and the red ribbon. In the story, Father Sky, who reigned over the spirit, came to Mother Earth, who bore the form of a woman of clay named Mary. Sky and Earth married, and together they conceived a beautiful star child made of both spirit and earth. The Star Child grew up and walked the world. The child of Father Sky and Mother Earth taught the world to live with the spirit in their clay hearts. Alice said the red of the holiday bow signified the Star Child’s sacrifice, and the green balsam of the wreath signified the everlasting life that was for all people born to the spirit of Father Sky. Shadow loved the story. It reminded him of his own sweet mother and the tales of Thunderbird who flew the skies in bird form in service to Gitche Manitou. Thunderbird was Shadow’s guardian, just like Shadow was the guardian for Theo. Shadow adored the season of light. He always felt warm and cozy when it came around.”

“They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.”