“Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushly carpeted funeral parlor which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower's lonely bedroom.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“A swelled head is just a result of nature's frenzied efforts to fill a vacuum.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“But all organic matter must have cell structure,” Sara said. “Cell structure is virtually a definition of organic matter, a requisite of all living tissue, plant or animal.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“He saw that, without exception, human beings were driven by self-interest.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“mankind was, in reality, the most ruthless, dangerous, unforgiving species on earth.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“The mild wind made the trees sway gently, in a lullaby rhythm, and the resultant susurration was like the soft sighs and dreamy murmurs of a thousand peacefully slumbering children.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“That was when you discovered she’d recently begun using PCP—what’s sometimes called ‘angel dust’ on the street.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“Even though she knew it wasn't biologically possible for her heart to rise into her throat, she swallowed it anyway.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
Dean Koontz
Born place: in Everett, Pennsylvania, The United States
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“I made a long speech in bad French in which I admitted that I was no critic, that I was always passionate and prejudiced, that I had no reverence for anything except what I liked. I told them that I was an ignoramus, which they tried to deny vigorously. I saidl would rather tell them stories. I began—about a bum who had tried to hit me up for a dime one evening as I was walking towards the Brooklyn Bridge. I explained how I had said No to the man automatically and then, after I had walked a few yards it suddenly came to me that a man had asked me for something and I ran back and spoke to him. But instead of giving him a dime or a quarter, which I could easily have done, I told him that I was broke, that I had wanted to let him know that, that was all. And the man had said to me—"do you mean that, buddy? Why, if that's the way it is, I'll be glad to give you a dime myself." And I let him give it to me, and I thanked him warmly, and walked off.
They thought it a very interesting story. So that's how it was in America? Strange country ... anything could happen there.
"Yes," I said, "a very strange country," and I thought to myself that it was wonderful not to be there any more and God willing I'd never return to it.
"And what is it about Greece that makes you like it so much?" asked someone.
I smiled. "The light and the poverty," I said.
"You're a romantic," said the man.
"Yes," I said, "I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs. And I also believe that if you have light, such as you have here, all ugliness is obliterated. Since I've come to your country I know that light is holy: Greece is a holy land to me."
"But have you seen how poor the people are, how wretchedly they live?"
"I've seen worse wretchedness in America," I said. "Poverty alone doesn't make people wretched."
"You can say that because you have sufficient …."
"I can say it because I've been poor all my life," I retorted. "I'm poor now," I added. "I have just'enough to get back to Athens. When I get to Athens I'll have to think how to get more. It isn't money that sustains me—it's the faith I have in myself, in my own powers. In spirit I am a millionaire—maybe that's the best thing about America, that you believe you'll rise again."
"Yes, yes," said Tsoutsou, clapping his hands, "that's the wonderful thing about America: you don't know what defeat is." He filled the glasses again and rose to make a toast "To America!" he said, "long may it live!"
"To Henry Miller!" said another, "because he believes in himself.”
― Henry Miller, quote from The Colossus of Maroussi
“You gently leaned over her to kiss her forehead and pulled the blankets around her shoulders. No father can adequately articulate the experience of watching his sleeping child—it must be lived. Now, imagine you are walking out of her room. Could you turn around and look at her and believe that the sum of her existence rests in a mass of cells? Certainly not. But this is exactly how a rank secularist is obliged to view his daughter. She is nothing more than a genetic product of his and her mother’s DNA. The puffing of air through her tiny chest keeps her alive. Your time with her is precious, meaningful, but purely a biological phenomenon. Her thoughts and feelings can be traced to neuronal firing in her brain. One day you will die and she will die and that will be that. Life began through the splitting and rejoining of DNA and when they stopped functioning, she did too.”
― quote from Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know
“La sociedad, el mundo, nuestras costumbres, vistos de cerca, me han revelado el peligro de mi creencia inocente y la superfluidad de mis fervientes trabajos. Estas provisiones son inútiles al ambicioso. ¡El que persigue la fortuna ha de llevar poco peso en la mochila!”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin
“The pulsations of the arteries along my fingers pressing across hers, told her what was passing within me:
she look’d down—a silence of some moments followed.”
― Laurence Sterne, quote from A Sentimental Journey
“Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom.”
― August Wilson, quote from Fences
Cam Girl
Unsouled
Pucked Under
Days of Blood and St...
The Garden of Rama
Lady Windermere's Fa...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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