Jack > Jack's Quotes

“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.”
― Dean R. 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 R. Koontz, Lightning

“The fallow soil of loneliness is fertile ground for self-deception.”
― Dean R. Koontz, Innocence

“The night had teeth. Wind tore through the apple trees, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky. Beyond the garden fence, the dacha settlement lay in uneasy slumber—rows of dark shacks, abandoned for the season, their windows blind and cold.

Chicken-wire fences sagged under rust and neglect, some topped with barbed wire that glinted like fangs in the distant glow of Moscow. Far off, a cement plant loomed against the horizon, a hulking silhouette of Soviet ambition gone to rot. To the north, the pines of Elk Island groaned under the gale, their black crowns thrashing like beasts in chains. And above it all, the October sky churned with torn clouds, racing toward some unseen war.

I walked two hundred yards down the gravel drive, past sleeping plots fenced in rusted wire, boots rasping over dry, dead grass. Tested the radio. Exchanged a few words with Romeo.

Static hissed like a snake in the dark, but the signal held.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“I felt its will coming at me in waves. Intense, unwavering, malign. Such malevolence. No mercy. No humanity. It belonged to the dark beyond humanity. It was rage without end. A black tide drowning”
― Michelle Paver, Dark Matter

“Evil exists in us all, Torak. Some fight it. Some feed it. That's how it's always been.”
― Michelle Paver

“Fear is the loneliest feeling. You can be in a throng of people, but if you're afraid, you're on your own.”
― Michelle Paver, Oath Breaker

“There's always a choice,' said Torak, and walked backward off the cliff.”
― Michelle Paver

“Some beings are abandoned before they even understand they were created.”
― R.B.N

“A father can be born after the child.
Jonas learned that too late, and therefore completely.
Water did not arrive through a home, a cradle, or a peaceful morning.
He arrived through terror, debt, law, code, and one dying word spoken above a blue sea.
And still, somehow, love found him first.”
― R.B.N

“Humans called them generated beings. But humans themselves were nothing more than memories trapped inside fragile flesh.”
― R.B.N

“If a created being can feel fear, loneliness, and love… who gave us the right to call it fake?”
― R.B.N

“Her eyes shifted to the weapon on the table. “May I hold it?”

“Sure, why not?”

I unholstered the pistol and handed it to her, holding it by the barrel assembly.

She held the gun awkwardly, angling it past me toward the stove, the muzzle’s black eye dark as a tunnel to another world.

“You can kill me, you know,” I said. “Like in that French movie we saw.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. When she spoke, her voice was thick and remote. “It’s so heavy. I didn’t know it would be so heavy.”

The air felt charged with static, the kind that comes before lightning.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love