"Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next."
— Dean Koontz (Fear Nothing)

"Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer."
— Dean Koontz (False Memory)

"Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."
— Dean Koontz

"Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose 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 thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day."
— Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)

"Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton."
— Dean Koontz

"Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Hours)

"No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are."
— Dean Koontz (Life Expectancy)

"Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid. "
— Dean Koontz

"When we hope, we usually hope for the wrong thing."
— Dean Koontz (Brother Odd)

"We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness."
— Dean Koontz

"She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells."
— Dean Koontz (Lightning)

"Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors."
— Dean Koontz

"Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"If God is an author and the universe is the biggest novel ever written, I may feel as if I'm the lead character in the story, but like every man and woman on Earth, I am a suporting player in one of billions of subplots. You know what happens to supporting players. Too often they are killed off in chapter 3, or in chapter 10, or in chapter 35. A supporting player always has to be looking over his shoulder."
— Dean Koontz (Life Expectancy)

"If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends. "
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie."
— Dean Koontz

"Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what."
— Dean Koontz

"The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth."
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book."
— Dean Koontz (Lightning)

"Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one."
— Dean Koontz (The Darkest Evening of the Year)

"Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid. "
— Dean Koontz

"Envy, envy eats them alive. If you had money, they’d envy you that. But since you don’t, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others."
— Dean Koontz (Lightning)

"Her beauty is not just—or even primarily—physical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beauty—which is the deepest truth of her—sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The 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. In her it is spark is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"Intuition is seeing with the soul."
— Dean Koontz

"Every life is complicated, every mind a kingdom of unmapped mysteries."
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"Of all the spirits I have seen, only Elvis and Mr. Sinatra are able to manifest in the garments of their choice. Others haunt me always in whatever they were wearing when they died.

This is one reason I will never attend a costume party dressed as the traditional symbol of the New Year, in nothing buy a diaper and a top hat. Welcomed into either Hell or Heaven, I do not want to cross the threshold to the sound of demonic or angelic laughter. ~Odd Thomas"
— Dean Koontz (Odd Hours)

"This world, which has the potential to be Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our arrogance, we have made it so."
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at many moment, cry, "Let's go!" and lead them on a great adventure."
— Dean Koontz

"We are not strangers to ourselves, we only try to be."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"When we make our own misery we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."
— Dean Koontz (One Door Away from Heaven)

"In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin."
— Dean Koontz

"Where there's cake, there's hope. And there's always cake. "
— Dean Koontz (Life Expectancy)

"As long as I have laughter, I am not without hope"
— Dean Koontz

"A short-order cook, just off work, makes easy tracking for lions and worse"
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"Alliteration seems to offend people."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas)

"It will all be better in the end and if it is not better then it must not be the end yet"
— Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)

"Change isn't eaisy.Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard."
— Dean Koontz (One Door Away from Heaven)

"Maybe when all was said and done, the imagination was the most powerful of all weapons. It was the imagination of the human race that had allowed it to dream of a life beyond cold caves and of a possible future in the stars."
— Dean Koontz (Winter Moon)

"Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy. "
— Dean Koontz

"Carpe Deim, Carpe Noctem."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen's daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society's intolerance for bad-tempered, evil-minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane."
— Dean Koontz (Dragon Tears)

"There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses."
— Dean Koontz (Intensity)

"Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"Even in the darkest moments, light exists if you have faith to see it. "
— Dean Koontz

"Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him."
— Dean Koontz (Your Heart Belongs to Me)

""...at it's best fiction is medicine.""
— Dean Koontz

"Hunches [are] just messages from the subconscious, which [is] thinking furiously all the time and processing information we have not consciously noted."
— Dean Koontz (Intensity)

"...like a scene from the swamps of Louisiana or the mind of Poe on opium."
— Dean Koontz (The Taking)

"The rain wasn't the usual glittering silver, but dark and dirty, as if nature were a scrubwoman wringing out a filthy mop."
— Dean Koontz (False Memory)