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Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.
It's only life. We all get through it.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.
The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs us, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.
As individuals, as families, as neighbors, as members of one community, people of all races and political views are usually decent, kind, compassionate. But in large corporations or governments, when great power accumulates in their hands, some become monsters even with good intentions.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.
Every expression of desired friendship has potential bite. Every smile reveals the teeth.
Nearly everything that was fun, of course, was also a little dangerous: riding roller coasters, skydiving, gambling, sex.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.
No one can tell you what your heart should feel.
The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.
In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths.
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.
DEAN KOONTZ, Odd Apocalypse
The blood of violence daunts even those with much experience of it. The splash, the spray, the drip and drizzle create infinite Rorschach patterns in every one of which the observer reads the same meaning: the fragility of his existence, the truth of his mortality.
These days, the City of Angels wasn't the easygoing place it had once been--and the hope of actually finding anyone living even an approximation of an angelic existence was slim indeed. Devils, yes: Those were relatively easy to locate.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.
You can con God and get away with it ... if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.
Humanity was drawn to turmoil and self-destruction as inevitably as the earth was drawn to complete its annual revolution of the sun.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Without trust, there can be no tranquil resting of the mind ... there can be no belief. No belief in kindness. Or integrity. In anything.
This world, which has the potential to be Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our arrogance, we have made it so.
If your work is deathwork, one weapon is not enough, just as a plumber would not answer an urgent service call with a single wrench.
I don't mean to imply that I'm afraid of Death. I'm just not ready to go out on a date with him.
When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.
The snow did not even whisper its way to earth, but seemed to salt the night with silence.
No degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.
We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which we must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness and despair.
Many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.
Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.
The wives of Spartans are the secret pillars of the world.
I've got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don't give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I'm no saint, the way you kid about. But I've always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It's a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You're always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don't just step off and walk in the cool grass.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Death lies dormant in each of us and will bloom in time.
A lot of fundamental physics is the solemn statement of the absurdly obvious. Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.
Of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
You know what's wrong with humanity?... The greatest gift we were given is our free will, and we keep misusing it.
The destruction that barbarians leave behind has a grim fascination, doesn't it? We're reminded how thin is the veneer of civilization.
We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.
Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows.
We live in God's amusement park.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.
Grief is a healthy emotion, and it's healthy to embrace it. By accepting loss, we clarify our values and the meaning of our lives.
Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.
The most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.
Life ... is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity. Without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster. The recognition of pain and fear in others gives rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.
One man's idea of perfect order is another man's chaos.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
All I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another.... The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are the most humorless, though in the movies they frequently get some of the best lines.
Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations.
DEAN KOONTZ, Odd Apocalypse
The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.
I'm just a human being, after all. Look deep enough inside any of us, you'll find a selfish bastard.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
While life could be evaded, death could not.
Our myths are rich with enchanters and enchantresses: sea nymphs that sing sailors onto rocks, Circe turning men into swine, pipers playing children to their doom. They are metaphors for the sinister secret urge to self-destruction that has been with us since the first bite of the first apple.
In the belly of Leviathan ... one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere.
Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose--if we dare.
Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.
Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.
When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices.
Only time conquers time and its burdens.
We are not born to wait. We are born to do.
DEAN KOONTZ, Your Heart Belongs to Me
The saddest thing in the world was that human beings, for all their ardent striving and desire, could never achieve physical, emotional, or intellectual perfection. The species was doomed to imperfection; it thrashed forever in despair or denial of that fact.
DEAN KOONTZ, Dark Rivers of the Heart
We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.
There is nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either.
How passionately we love everything that cannot last: the dazzling crystallory of winter, the spring in bloom, the fragile flight of butterflies, crimson sunsets, a kiss, and life.
Some people misunderstand evil and believe it will relent, and because their misplaced hope inspires dark hearts to dream darker dreams, they are the fathers and mothers of all wars. Evil does not relent; it must be defeated. And even when defeated, uprooted, and purified by fire, evil leaves behind a seed that will one day germinate and, in blooming, again be misunderstood.
DEAN KOONTZ, Odd Apocalypse
To a predator, fear indicates weakness.
DEAN KOONTZ, Fear Nothing
There's evil in the world, all right. Being aware of it makes you a realist, not a paranoid.
DEAN KOONTZ, Your Heart Belongs to Me
Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity.
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