Intensity

by Dean Koontz

Trouble often followed voices raised in one kind of passion or another. Sometimes, however, the worst offenses were preceded by calculated silences and stealth.

But personal safety at the expense of others was cowardice, and cowardice was a right only of small children who lacked the strength and experience to defend themselves.

It’s not possible to retreat into a bottomless pit—one can only plunge.

If fate doesn’t actually exist, it ought to.

The nature of the world is sensation. We drift in an ocean of sensory stimuli: motion, color, texture, shape, heat, cold, natural symphonies of sound, an infinite number of scents, tastes beyond the human ability to catalogue. Nothing but sensation endures. Living things all die. Great cities do not last. Metal corrodes and stone crumbles. Over eons, continents are reshaped, whole mountain ranges vanish, and seas run dry. The planet itself will be vaporized when the sun self-destructs. But even in the void of deep space, between solar systems, in that profound vacuum that will not transmit sound, there is nevertheless light and darkness, cold, motion, shape, and the awful panorama of eternity.

her butt clenched tighter than a politician’s fist around a cash bribe.