“Human beings, however, were different from apples and oranges: The flavor of the peel did not reliably predict the taste of the pulp.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“He had tried to shed his pain, to rise from the ashes like a drab phoenix with no hope except the cold peace of indifference. Now that events forced him to open himself to the world again, he was swamped by emotion as a novice surfer was overwhelmed by each cresting wave.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward-looking, retro-thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“For the first time, he considered that utter indifference might inspire not inner peace but a limitless capacity for evil.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Grandpa Teddy often said, “In the beginning was the word. Before all else, the word. So we speak as if words matter, because they do.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“The truth was in her voice as sure as rain and sunshine are in a green blade of grass.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“anger harms no one more than he who harbors it. That both bitterness and true happiness are choices that we make, not conditions that fall upon us from the hands of fate. That peace is to be found in the acceptance of things that we are unable to change. That friends and family are the blood of life, and that the purpose of existence is caring, commitment.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself, and it is, therefore, the most powerful and valuable form of energy in the universe. For a time, the spirit may become flesh, but when that phase of its existence is at an end, it will be transformed into a disembodied spirit once more.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Once, when cornered by a pinwheel-eyed man who insisted that the mayor of Los Angeles was not human but a robot controlled by the audioanimatronics department at Disneyland, Joe had lowered his voice and said, with nervous sincerity, “Yes, we’ve known about that for years. But if we print a word of it, the people at Disney will kill us all.” He had spoken with such conviction that the nutball had exploded backward and fled.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“This was Greater Los Angeles in an age of change, crackling with the energy of doom, yearning for the Apocalypse, where an unintended slight or an inadvertent trespass on someone else’s turf might result in a thermonuclear response.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Even when acceptance is achieved and a degree of happiness attained, joy often remains elusive forever, like a promise of water in a dry well once brimming but now holding only the deep, damp smell of past sustenance. Yet”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Taking in money, banks were like industrial vacuum cleaners. Giving it out, they were clogged faucets. Heather”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Watching television news of freeway wrecks, apartment-building fires, and heinous murders, one sat numb and unaffected. Music that had once stirred the heart, art that had once touched the soul, now had no effect. Some people overcame this loss of sensitivity in a year or two, others in five years or ten, but others – never. The”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“If we live forever, it doesn’t matter so much what happens to us here.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Most movies are stupidity machines—like politicians.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“The sea delivered the message that life was nothing more than meaningless mechanics and cold tidal forces, a bleak message of hopelessness that was tranquilizing precisely because it was brutally humbling.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“He believed that he must learn to accept the cold mechanics of Creation, because it made no sense to rail at a mindless machine. After all, a clock could not be held responsible for the too-swift passage of time. A loom could not be blamed for weaving the cloth that later was sewn into an executioner’s hood. He hoped that if he came to terms with the mechanistic indifference of the universe, with the meaningless nature of life and death, he would find peace. Such”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“If the universe was a cold mechanism, if life was a journey from one empty blackness to another, he could not rant at God, because to do so was no more effective than screaming for help in the vacuum of deep space where sound could not travel, or like trying to draw breath underwater.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“Only the forces of ignorance and darkness benefit from secrecy.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Sole Survivor
“out of nowhere, into the here”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Death: The Time of Your Life
“If one does not develop, one goes down. In life, in ordinary conditions everything goes down, or one capacity may develop at the expense of another.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way
“Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. “’tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King’s dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established.” Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. “We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer ’tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed.” And”
― H.W. Brands, quote from The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
“Mom and Bear got into a big fight that afternoon when she told him what had happened. He kept yelling about how she wasn’t “hard enough” on me, and she kept telling him to back off. I just stayed in my room, wishing for it to be over. Finally, Mom said something about how she was late for work, and she slammed the door on her way out.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“إن الأزمة العميقة للهوية البشرية التي سببتها الحياة "في الكذب", والحياة التي أسست عليها لها بالتأكيد بعد أخلاقي: يظهر هذا البعد كأزمة أخلاقية عميقة في المجتمع, إن الإنسان الذي سقط في منظومة القيم الإستهلاكية, وانصهر في مزيج القافلة الحضارية, ولم ينخرط في نظام الوجود بناء على شعوره بمسؤولية أعلى من مسؤوليته عن البقاء كفرد يعد إنسان منزوع الأخلاق. يعتمد النظام على هذا الإنعدام الأخلاقي ويعمقه كمخرج اجتماعي له.”
― Václav Havel, quote from The Power of the Powerless
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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.