The House at the End of the World

by Dean Koontz

Isolation is a wall against fear and despair.

There can never be too much justice in Utopia.

Failure to be prepared is a failure to hope.

An artist is a mathematician who knows the formulas of the soul.

true compassion is noble and demanding, but that tenderness is a vain form of pity indulged in by those who want to feel good about themselves without being put to the inconvenience of doing something.

She is not afraid of the dark. She has lived in darkness for two years, ten months, and eighteen days.

There is something sacred about great suffering, and it is the sacredness that makes the pain endurable.

These days, “science” is often nothing more than a cover story.

However, experience has taught her that allies in a righteous cause are rare in a world of self-interest. Expect deceit. Distrust is essential to survival.

When the right thing to do feels seven ways wrong, it’s still the right thing, and doing it is what separates the quick from the dead.

Paranoia can be a serious mental illness. It can also be the proper state of mind for prey in a universe of predators.

As an artist, she can create only when using two brushes, one of emotion and the other of meaning:

She has chosen to live alone rather than give her heart again to anything that will die.

Excruciating grief can be a breeding ground for anger, however, especially for a man who feels responsible not just for those who deserve his protection but also for the triumph of evil in general.

Human nature is to look at a child and see the sins of the parents if the parents’ actions resulted in horrific suffering and mass death.

You can refuse to give up, but nonetheless be broken in the process of not surrendering.

What good is genius without humility? What value does it have if it isn’t married undivorceable to kindness and empathy?

those who believe in revolutionary change and great leaps forward always thrill to the promise of the new to a degree beyond all reason.

she is cursed with a mind that cannot live only in the moment.

These recent events have summoned her from a dream of permanent escape to the reality that in a well-lived life, there is never any escape from commitment, from responsibility not merely for family but also for others whom the violent would sweep away. She has been awakened as well to the realization that though perhaps half of humanity has no such sense of responsibility, their indifference is no justification for her to retreat into a life of self-interest.

Fear is useful when it’s on a leash, but it’s always a bad dog when you let it run free in your mind.

People are books of a kind, each one a story. Sometimes, with no more than a glance or a gesture or a poignant word, they turn a page for you and reveal a deeper truth about themselves than you’ve seen before.

Those for whom self-love is the only love are very skilled at creating fantasies in which they live contentedly until reality threatens to pop their bubble, whereupon they can be capable of any atrocity in defense of their delusions.

Cinnamon-pecan rolls washed down with hot, black coffee seem to prove that the world has meaning and, therefore, a future.

“One-way caring is the virtue of virtues, honey. It’s why we’re on this world.”

“I don’t know about principles. I think I heard of ’em. What I do got is a healthy fear of Hell.”

speaking the devil’s name doesn’t summon him, but pretending there is no devil will ensure that proudest of demons will put in an appearance to mock you.

There is no end of the world, Michael, because in every end, there’s a new beginning.