Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas (2003)

94 Sourced Quotes

View all Dean Koontz Quotes
Loss is the hardest thing, I said. But it's also the teacher that's the most difficult to ignore.

Dean Koontz
When I am battered and oppressed by the world that humanity has made - which is difference from the world that is was given - my primary defense, my consolation, is the absurdity of that world

Dean Koontz
Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.

Dean Koontz
A great deal of phenomenal experience has fostered in me a flexibility of the mind and imagination that some might call madness

Dean Koontz
The broom wasn't as comforting as a flamethrower would have been, but it was better than a mop and certainly more threatening than a feather duster.

Dean Koontz
I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.

Dean Koontz
I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I am old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.

Dean Koontz
Life had not taught me to distrust ministers, but it had taught me to trust no one more than dogs.

Dean Koontz
I have learned a great deal from novels. Some of it is even true.

Dean Koontz
Or maybe they were just doing it for fun. A lark. Their religion is tolerant of extreme forms of recreation. Boys will be boys, after all, and sociopathic boys will be sociopathic.

Dean Koontz
Being polite is not only the right way to respond to people but also the easiest. Life is so filled with unavoidable conflict that I see no reason to promote more confrontations.

Dean Koontz
Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.

Dean Koontz
Fate isn't one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

Dean Koontz
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.

Dean Koontz
More to the point, I know why soldiers, home from war, seldom tell their families about their exploits in more than general terms. We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we've witnessed of man's inhumanity to man, we simply can't go on. perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.

Dean Koontz
From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.

Dean Koontz
One of those librarians who rules the stacks with an intimidating scowl, whispers quiet sharply enough to lacerate the tender inner tissues of the ear, and will pursue an overdue-book fine with the ferocity of a rabid ferret.

Dean Koontz
A short-order cook, just off work, makes easy tracking for lions and worse

Dean Koontz
Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

Dean Koontz
We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.

Dean Koontz
What sucks the worst is... this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't.

Dean Koontz
In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar. Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can.
Odd Thomas speaking

Dean Koontz
I need those nukes, the chief said. I need them, I need them right now. I don't want to be an enabler, sir. I'd rather get you into a twelve step program to help you break this addiction.

Dean Koontz
After once having made the mistake of watching television news, I had worried for a while about an asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out human civilization. The anchorwoman had said it was not merely possible but probable. At the end of the report, she smiled.

Dean Koontz
Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed.

Dean Koontz
You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.

Dean Koontz
In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths.

Dean Koontz
She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Dean Koontz
There's just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It's not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it's that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don't see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren't there.

Dean Koontz
"Sometimes," I said, "it seems to me that a friend might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do."
"Dear Odd! If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not, in fact, his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness."

Dean Koontz