Devoted

by Dean Koontz

“But in the end, our origins are all the same, born in the heart that shaped all that is.”

However, the world was full of worse things than dogcatchers.

She could remain an optimist because she understood that the world was made exclusively for the innocent. Rooms to house the wicked weren’t included in the original architecture. Eventually, the world would be remodeled to restore it to its original purpose.

True in the sense that, strange as it was, it described the matrix underlying life, a matrix of unsuspected connections among people, places, and moments widely separated in time.

Bella could not live without stories. Stories were the greatest blessing of intelligence. They were food for the soul. They were medicine. You could live a thousand lives through stories—and learn to shape your own life into a story of the best kind.

Megalomania.

See dictionary.

heretofore

It was evidence of his dread that he wondered what the smell would be like in a warren of raw earth where a snake curled among the wriggling lengths of its recent offspring. Maybe like this?

mellifluous—awakened

Mellifluous- having a smooth flowing sound.

What might have been awkward revelations were instantly purged of mortification in the sharing. For one thing, both Kipp and Woody were innocent and had been inoculated against the loss of innocence, the former because of his canine nature, the latter because of his developmental disability. Furthermore, both understood that all creatures with high cognitive ability, to one degree or another, were often fools and should embrace their foolishness rather than deny it. That understanding ensured humility. Humility was the foundation for all lasting achievements.

concrete spelunkers—who

catacomber

prediluvian.”

“Prediluvian—out of date, ancient, before Noah and the Flood, white male thinking at its worst.”

The words were “See me,” issued like a serpent’s hiss, and the story was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” about a violent orangutan trained to commit murder.

As a student of the natural world, he knew that nature was a green machine, indifferent to the creatures—from mice to men—that struggled to survive within it. Every machine is made to be used, however, and whatever power employed nature to a purpose, it was able to produce wonders, humanity being one of them, the Mysterium being another.

or when any politician on the make insisted on a secure face-to-face sit-down with Dorian himself to work out the terms under which the public servant would sell out his office and constituents.

A dog’s nose had forty-four muscles. The human nose had just four. The number of scent receptors in a canine nose might not exceed the number of stars in the sky, but sometimes it seemed that way. Humans had less than 1 percent as many scent receptors.

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

To cross over from this blighted age to the transhuman future and rise above the limitations of the human species,

to become as a god, it was necessary to think like a god. And gods recognized no limitations.

The sheriff hurried into his bathroom and downed a fifty-milligram Viagra with a swallow of Scotch.

She was already in the mood, and the sight of all that money would be like feeding her a pound of a powerful aphrodisiac.

barbiturate thiopental,

“Woody,” Ben said, “is something wrong?” “I can’t talk. I’m being autistic.” Megan put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t ham it up, sweetie.”

😂

He actually got the weapon out of his holster, and then all the dogs in the world cascaded down the steps, through the foyer, into the living room, big bitches and big sonsofbitches, enough teeth for ten nightmares.

Some people said the arc of history led to justice, but that was foolishness. There was no justice, or very little. The word was too political to have an enduring meaning; the definition of justice was continuously changing. Those who fancied themselves champions of justice always had a price—money or prestige, or the adoration of crowds, or self-esteem—and when Dorian got them what

they wanted, every one of them traded his or her cause for the price paid.

Truth was something else again. If ever a large number of people became hell-bent on knowing the truth of things, not merely a few stiff-necked crusaders but a majority of humanity...

An army of the just.

Kipp was best man.

Awe!