Odd Apocalypse

We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.

The best part of a Mr. Goodbar is not the wrapper, is it? No, and the best part of a Coke is not the can. On those nights when you lie awake, either man or boy, wondering about yourself, peeling away one layer of oddness after another, you should remember and always be grateful that the woefully imperfect person that you are, with all your contradictions and unworthy desires, is not the best of you, any more than the wrapper is the best part of a Mr. Goodbar. -Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koonts pgs. 354-355 chapter 53

Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy - well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.

Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations. And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass. We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.

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

In memory, she lived and moved and laughed, but all that a photograph could offer was one frozen moment of a life.

Narcissists are everywhere in this ripe age of self-love, which amazes me because so much in life would seem to foster humility. Each of us is a potential source of foolishness, each of us must endure the consequences of the foolishness of others, and in addition to all of that, Nature frequently works to impress upon us our absurdity and thereby remind us that we are not the masters of the universe that we like to suppose we are. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 62 chapter 8

Duty doesn't need to call; it only needs to whisper. And if you heed the call, no matter what happens, you have no need for regret." Odd Thomas

Ambition and stupidity are a dangerous combination.

Every beautiful facade seemed to conceal rot and ruin that I could almost see.

Nothing can be imagined, nothing can be visualized in our minds, until we have a word for it. Therefore, when I give myself to the free flow of any words that trip off my tongue without predetermination, I am tapping into the primal creative power at the heart of the cosmos. Or maybe I'm just a bullshit artist.

...up to no good—and pleased about it.

I didn't have a cell phone because I never needed to play video games or surf the Net, or exchange nude photos with a congressman. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 137 chapter 19

We are buried when we're born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.

When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, "I don't hate you." She called me an effing liar and said, "Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate." "I stopped hating anyone the day when I realized hating can't restore to me anything that's lost.

The dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider it's the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles.

His glare could melt a polar bear's testicles.

People sometimes speak in code, often without realizing they are doing so, as much a mystery to themselves as others.

Even with the intention to be quiet, human beings seldom can restrain from comment or at least grumbled cursing; we are the chattering species, as much as we are anything else - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 56 chapter 7

All death matters." "Only to the living.

the nip that twitches through your blood is the chill of the sudden suspicion that you are a stranger in a strange land.

That's all that matters, really: that we can make each other feel better.

I was like a thought slipping through the fissures...

I am amazed that there are still nights when I sleep well.

There is in me a darkness that, by darkness challenged, will rise up and have its way.

Do not doubt the beauty of your heart.

The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert.

We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.