Dean Koontz

For a thinking creature of high intellect there can be no pleasure separate from emotion. If you deny men emotion you deny them pleasure.

Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

I believe in the possibility of miracles but more to the point, I believe in our need for them.

Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over everyday, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and affecting that the heart is nearly stilled in astonishment.

Savor the warmth of every sun-filled day, and the chill wind of every raging storm, weeds as much as flowers, the bitter and the sweet.

Moments of extreme terror bring back the gestures of our youth.

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.

Understanding wasn't always necessary as long as you believed.

In moderate doses melancholy can be strangley comforting, darkly sweet; it can by providing contrast, give an exquisitely sharp edge to happiness, especially to pleasures of the flesh.

When life hands us a beutiful bouquet of flowers we stare at it in cautious expectation of a bee.

Creating a family in this turbulent world is an act of faith, a wager that against all odds there will be a future, that love can last, that the heart can triumph against all adversities and even against the grinding wheel of time.