Devoted

by Dean Koontz

And he is alone. No one to listen. No one to understand. No one to care.

This Is my life now.

At 3:50 a.m., his eyelids flipped up with an almost audible click, and he became awake, with no chance whatsoever of falling back into sleep.

Woody is me!

When you were a high-functioning autistic genius, your developmental disorder, coming with a singular ability to concentrate intensely for long periods of time on what might seem to be mundane facts, was an advantage of great value.

This is autobiological!

If you allow yourself to be disrespected, you’re weak. The weak inevitably become prey. Prey dies. Prey dies by tooth and claw.

Progress was real progress only when it evolved naturally and thoughtfully from the history of human experience and accumulated wisdom. When it was imposed in contempt for that experience and wisdom, then progress was in fact radical destruction.

Word. German citizenry once worshiped and loved Hitler and nazism. Now Germans have come to grip with their past. I wonder if Americans will come to grip with Republicanism, the worship and love of nazism or will it take war and destruction? History tells us it is inevitable. But when did humans ever learn from history?

Cruising the picturesque streets of his beloved Pinehaven, Carson began to understand that what he sought was an escape from the hubris of humanity, from the endless discontent of those who believed in one utopia or another in spite of the fact that history showed utopian thinking to lead inevitably to disaster and often to mass murder on an industrial scale. But of course there could be no escape from the overweening pride and arrogance of the species. You could withdraw, remake your life with a small circle of friends who didn’t wish to silence and punish their fellow countrymen with whom they disagreed, who knew the grievous threat to peace that arose from contempt for others, from an inflated self-esteem that became vainglory. But there was no town remote enough, no fortress walls high enough to protect you from mad ideas with mass appeal.

It is prevalent in our little rural community of Cortez, Colorado. It's like living in 1933 Nuremberg.

Over the years, he’d been bitten three times, and every dog that had ever crossed his path had looked at him as though it wanted not only to bite him but to tear out his throat. All dogs looked at him the way wise cops looked at him, the way attractive women with street smarts looked at him, the way mothers with tender young daughters looked at him: with suspicion, disgust, and contempt.

Story of my life. I welcome the end.

People would be forced to confront the daunting fact that the truth they claimed to pursue and cherish was in fact a burden that they most often chose not to carry, that the lies they insisted they despised were instead often preferred to hard facts and cold reality.

This is occurring now in my community. It's going to get very violent I fear.