The Forest of Lost Souls Quotes

“Be not so foolish as to cling to what was, rather than embrace what can be.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Dogs can be trained to be civilized & dutiful, but they can't be coerced into repressing their unique personalities, as can many human beings who will remake themselves into automatons & enchain their own souls in the name of one ideology or another.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“who lust for power and draw across the world a darkness that denies the light by which the universe”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“rivières;”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Most people regard the primeval forest as a threatening domain of wilderness trails that often lead bewildered hikers to their deaths, nests of poisonous snakes, dens of sharp-toothed predators—a realm where Nature is red of tooth and claw. To Vida, however, the forest is a place of solace and succor where she is welcome because she has knowledge of—and deep respect for—its ways. In her experience, it is civilization, riven by human arrogance and greed and envy, that is, at its worst, a forest of lost souls.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“City-born and city-shaped, Regis isn’t just out of his element in Kettleton County; he’s deeply offended by the place. Instead of manicured parks and botanical gardens, there are meadows that have never been mowed and unkempt forests. Animals of infinite variety shit wherever they want, and no one ventures into the woods or fields to pick up the crap in plastic bags for proper disposal. Instead of a Starbucks, there are establishments like the hole-in-the-wall called Java Joe’s that also sells doughnuts and muffins with no respect for those who have problems with gluten. The only restaurant in town offering duck is Hazel’s Homestyle, where the menu trumpets “Quacker a la Orange”; instead of tablecloths, paper placemats feature a grotesque cartoon of Hazel in an apron and chef’s hat. The people are the worst of it. Because they can grow their own food and hunt game for their meat and fix anything that breaks down, they think they know what life is about. However, they would have no idea how to conduct themselves in a private jet or how to get a good table in New York’s finest restaurant. They are stubborn people who don’t know what’s good for them, and most of them refuse to learn. They need to be put through a rigorous reeducation process to better program their minds, but because most of them are gun fanatics, that is not currently a viable resolution to the problem they pose.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“there are too many of them out there, all hell-bent on making other people as unhappy as they are.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“There is strength in solidarity, but also in suffering and in struggle and in hope.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“For some reason, though there is neither a steeple nor stained glass, the house reminds him of a church. He takes that impression seriously. He thinks it possible that ceremonies of innocence, the humble routines and kind sharing of daily existence that give life meaning, when performed often and for long enough, can confer on a house a hallowed quality. He’s known such homes; he has known their opposite, where human depravity has so soiled a structure that an aura of evil shadows every room even when all the lights are lit.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“It doesn’t pay to be special in this world, Uncle. In fact, it’s dangerous.”
― Dean Koontz , The Forest of Lost Souls

“most people will still believe what isn’t true, because the truth is heavy to carry compared to the lightness of a lie.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“It’s human and sane to want peace and to yearn for transcendence in this world of war and insistent nihilism.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“I SAID TO MY SOUL, BE STILL, AND LET THE DARK COME UPON YOU.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“returns”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“so,” the seer continues, “myths were inspired, initially to instill in people the idea that this life has meaning, and over time to help that idea strengthen into a conviction. This took many centuries, but there was no reason to be in a hurry because time as humans perceive it is an illusion.” Although she’s a girl”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“The bad is yours to cure by action, the good to enjoy and share.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Even an ultimate artificial general intelligence, possessing all the knowledge of humanity, won’t have a conscience or a soul. A person without a conscience is a sociopath. Sociopaths are incapable of love.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Wait without thought, Vida told herself, for you are not ready for thought.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Another and necessary kind of courage, which he has come to understand by reading adventure novels, is to know yourself for what you really are, accept what that is, and correct those habits and attitudes that need to be corrected. You can’t be a hero if you run away from either the enemy or the truth of yourself.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“but friendship is a kind of love and a priceless blessing.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“LOOK WITH KINDNESS ON THOSE WHO SUFFER, WHO STRUGGLE AGAINST DIFFICULTIES, WHO DRINK UNCEASINGLY THE BITTERNESS OF THIS LIFE.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“She thinks, Have pity on those who love and are separated, on the lonely, on those who mourn, on those who fear, on all the little animals that live their lives as prey, but pity as well the animals that must kill to survive in this fallen world.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Have pity on those who love and are separated, on the lonely, on those who mourn, on those who fear, on all the little animals that live their lives as prey.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Those and many others,” Sun Spirit says. “They’ve been wildly romanticized. Although they sometimes lived in tolerance of one another, they more often oppressed one another, went to war with one another, enslaved and killed one another—for they were human. When we deny their nature, we also deny their humanity and minimize the complexity of their lives. Like human beings throughout history, they could not get rid of a feeling of the uncanny, of a sense that there is an unseen dimension to life and something that comes after. They all thought this place sacred, and it was the one piece of ground over which they never fought, for each nation had its own section of this tableland that served as a burial ground. That has been long forgotten by many—and now, judging by what you’ve told us, the truth is being concealed by those who covet the place. In those far times, they didn’t call it the Grand Plateau. It was the Land of Spirits Waiting. Waiting to be called from this world to another.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“mattock”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Powered by a bearingless engine, the Blue Edge main rotor has five double-swept blades, each with three Blue Pulse flaps in its trailing edge that are automatically activated as many as forty times per second. This all but eliminates blade-vortex interaction that produces the thwop-thwop-thwop noise when a rotor blade impacts the wake vortex created by the blade in front of it.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“processes of nature resulting in less than an ideal human physiology that isn’t just mortal but also allows for inconveniences such as headaches and hangnails and constipation. However,”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“There is a poem about AI, by Richard Brautigan—” “I know it. ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls

“Rhadamanthus,”
― Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls