Quotes from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Dogs, lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and the mistakes we make because of those illusions.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Too many dogs continue to be abused and abandond - one is too many - and people continue to kill people for money and envy and no reason at all. Bad people succeed and good people fail, but that's not the end of the story. Miracles happen that nobody sees, and among us walk heroes who are never recognised, and people live in loneliness because they cannot believe they are loved”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Bad people succeed and good people fail, but that's not the end of the story. Miracles happen that nobody sees, and among us walk heroes who are never recognized, and people live in loneliness because they cannot believe they are loved.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“I can love October in September. September doesn’t care.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“The geometry of judgment is a circle. Hate is a snake that turns to consume itself from the tail, a circle that diminishes to a point, then to nothing. Pride is such a snake, and envy, and greed. Love, however, is a hoop, a wheel, that rolls on forever. We are rescued by those whom we have rescued. The saved become the saviors of their saviors.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“At the core of every ordered system, whether a family or a factory, is chaos. But in the whirl of every chaos lies a strange order, waiting to be found.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Like children, dogs want discipline and are most secure when they have rules to live by. The happiest dogs are those with gentle masters who quietly but firmly demand respect.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“For some, the past is a chain, each day a link, raveling backward to one ringbolt or another, in one dark place or another, and tomorrow is a slave to yesterday.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Dogs' lives are short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“When I see those sad, abused and neglected animals on those commercials I feel despair for the human race. Too many people repay loyalty with faithlessness and give no thought to their own final hours when the might have to ask another to grant them the mercy that they withheld from those who trusted them.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness was an opportunity for a lost and selfish human heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls. Cinnamon”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“For a long time things were so bad. Very bad. Dark even when there was light.
The only thing that kept the dark back was the Forever Shiny Thing that was her secret...
It is a word...the word hangs on a silver chain. The word is HOPE.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“tomorrow is a slave to yesterday.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Even someone like Mrs. Bonnaventura, who had lived a mostly blameless life, when ushered into the awesome presence of the Creator of the infinite universe and also of the butterfly, would discover ten thousand fearsome new layers of meaning in the word humility.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.
Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self interest.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you’re going to lose a dog, and there’s going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can’t support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of those illusions.” Dear”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

“Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at any moment, cry “Let’s go!” and lead them on a great adventure.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Darkest Evening of the Year

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“Surveys have shown that ranking very close to the fear of death is the fear of public speaking. Why would someone feel profound fear, deep in his or her stomach, about public speaking, which is so far from death? Because it isn’t so far from death when we link it. Those who fear public speaking actually fear the loss of identity that attaches to performing badly, and that is firmly rooted in our survival needs. For all social animals, from ants to antelopes, identity is the pass card to inclusion, and inclusion is the key to survival. If a baby loses its identity as the child of his or her parents, a possible outcome is abandonment. For a human infant, that means death. As adults, without our identity as a member of the tribe or village, community or culture, a likely outcome is banishment and death. So the fear of getting up and addressing five hundred people at the annual convention of professionals in your field is not just the fear of embarrassment—it is linked to the fear of being perceived as incompetent, which is linked to the fear of loss of employment, loss of home, loss of family, your ability to contribute to society, your value, in short, your identity and your life. Linking an unwarranted fear to its ultimate terrible destination usually helps alleviate that fear. Though you may find that public speaking can link to death, you’ll see that it would be a long and unlikely trip.”
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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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