Quotes from Intensity

Dean Koontz ·  436 pages

Rating: (63.7K votes)


“There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Hunches [are] just messages from the subconscious, which [is] thinking furiously all the time and processing information we have not consciously noted.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Even if God exists, does He know that you do?”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity



“Much of her life had been lived like a balancing act on a spearpoint fence, and on a particularly difficult night when she was twelve, she had decided that instinct was, in fact, the quiet voice of God. Prayers did receive replies, but you had to listen closely and believe in the answer. At twelve, she wrote in her diary: "God doesn't shout; He whispers, and in the whisper is the way.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“She'd been acutely aware that terror, betrayal, and cruelty had a human face, but she had not sufficiently appreciated that courage, kindness, and love had a human face as well.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Sometimes, just trying was a triumph.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“God does not shout; He whispers, and in that whisper is the way." Chyna Shepard in "Intensity”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity



“Power is living while others inevitably perish. Power is cool indifference to their suffering. Power is taking nourishment from the deaths of others, just as the mighty redwoods draw sustenance from the perpetual decomposition of what once lived, but lived only briefly, around them. This is also part of the philosophy of Edgler Foreman Vess.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“The sole purpose of existence is to open oneself to sensation and to satisfy all appetites as they arise.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“she’d known that being a victim was often a choice people made.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Chyna Shepherd, untouched and alive and able to pee.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“She was reduced to the dependency of an infant, too terrified of life itself to find solace anywhere but in the familiar succoring breast and in the sound of that same heartbeat remembered from the womb.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity



“Now he must deal with the security system, which has recorded everything that he's done. A video camera is mounted over the front door and focused on the cashiers' counter. Edgler Foreman Vess has no desire to see himself on television news. Living with intensity is virtually impossible when one is in prison.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“She wasn’t clay in the hands of others; she was rock, and with her own determined hands, she could sculpt the person that she wanted to be.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“The normality of the house terrified her: the gleaming surfaces, the tidiness, the homey touches, the sense that a person lived here who might walk in daylight on any street and pass for human in spite of the atrocities that he had committed.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Hope wasn't a cottage industry; it was neither a product that she could manufacture like needlepoint samplers nor a substance she could secrete, in her cautious solitude, like a maple tree producing the essence of syrup. Hope was to be found in other people, by reaching out, by taking risks, by opening her fortress heart.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“It is the purpose for which we exist. This reckless caring.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity



“victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring: Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“She’d been living in a prison since the day she’d been born, even after leaving her mother, a prison of fear and shame and lowered expectations, and she’d been so accustomed to her circumscribed life that she had not recognized the bars.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“The value of any experience isn’t in its positive or negative effect on his life but in the sheer luminous power of it, the vividness, the ferocity, the amount and degree of pure sensation that it provides. Intensity.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“If coincidence can give, it can take.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“She wasn’t clay in the hands of others; she was rock, and with her own determined hands, she could sculpt the person that she wanted to be. She”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity



“Echoing off the tile walls, the sizzle-splash of the falling water sounded like the hissing of serpents and the brittle laughter of strange children.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“A truly nice smile combined with self-control can take a person a long way.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist’s equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


“Asshole.” “Your mother never taught you words like that.” “You don’t know my mother,” she said thickly.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Intensity


About the author

Dean Koontz
Born place: in Everett, Pennsylvania, The United States
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“I'll see you soon," he whispered, the lump in his throat rising again to jar the release of his sigh. He swallowed once more and said, "But it won't be soon enough.”
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