All she wanted was love with respect, respect was so important to her, and I could give her that.

She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to...

She said…she said don’t be scared, we wasn’t born to be all the time scared, we was born happy, babies laugh at everything, we was born happy and to make a better world.

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,...

Sometimes, just trying was a triumph.

…what makes humanity beautiful is our free will, our individuality, our endless striving in spite of our imperfection.BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOONChapter 27 Page 214

By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I’ll learn how to die, and leave the world and hope to land in light.

What was destiny? What was the power that shaped the patterns and attempted to enforce them? God? Should she be raging at God – or begging Him to let her son live and to spare...

I warned myself against the danger of compassion in this case. How easy it would be to imagine the traumas of childhood that might have deformed her into the moral monster she had become, and...

What really holds their marriage together are mutual respect of an awesome depth, a shared sense of humor, faith that they were brought together by a force greater than themselves, and a love so unwavering...

Duty is a good thing, a calling without which no civilization can survive, but it is also a weight and chain that sometimes seems sure to sink you to the airless bottom of a dark...

the worst happens when you least expect it

After his dinner, the wolfhound liked to prowl the grounds, sniffing the grass to learn what creatures of field and forest had recently visited. The yard was Merlin’s newspaper.

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...

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.

My unique path through life has led me, however, to fear known threats but seldom the unknown, while most people fear both.

He would pray…for everyone who knew pain, which meant everyone who wore a human face.

If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good...

I’m small, I’m young – and I’m so different. You’ve always respected that difference, and you’ve always trusted it. Trust me now. There’s a reason I am the way I am, and there’s a reason...

Evil was coming. I wondered whose face it would be wearing.

I don’t know if this deception qualified as a half-step down the slippery slope. I had no sensation of sliding. But of course we never notice the descent until we’re rocketing along at high velocity.

Life without meaningcannot be borne.We find a missionto which we’re sworn–or answer the callof Death’s dark horn.Without a gleaningof purpose in life,we have no vision,we live in strife,–or let blood fallon a suicide knife.

If you really truly want to know, I’ve thought if I was ever free someday, I might discover I’ve held my tears so long that I can’t cry anymore, that I’m a dry stone and...

Sully disapproved of destruction for destruction’s sake, which seemed ever more popular in the modern world, but he always took delight in burning out or otherwise eliminating Evil when Evil just couldn’t keep its ugly...

They said there was no rest for the wicked. In fact, there was rest neither for the virtuous nor the wicked, nor for guys like Billy, who were uncommitted regarding the whole idea of virtue...

The truth was stranger than the official fiction.

Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it,” he instructed before I began to write, “because you won’t find the...

Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be.People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon...

She never had much in this life, but with the simplest things, she made her corner of the world as beautiful as any king’s palace. We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what...

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...

Hand-to-hand combat with three hundred pounds of screaming monkey menace is not my idea of a fair fight. My idea of a fair fight is one unarmed, toothless, nearsighted old monkey versus me with a...

In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time...

She blinked, sat up, and saw Chris in the bathroom doorway. He’d just gotten out the shower. His hair was damp, and he was dressed only in his briefs. The sight of his thin, boyish...

Chronologically she is twelve but emotionally she is older, and intellectually older still.

Embrace the weather, child, and you’ll understand the balance of the world.

Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.

Funny how people that don’t believe in nothin’ are so quick to believe every crazy story about people like us.

Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would...

We were friends, never paramours. A lover who is enigmatic will most likely prove to be a cataclysm waiting to happen. But a charming friend whose usual warmth is raveled through moments of cool inscrutability...

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom.Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open...

When I was a child, I first thought that these shades might be malevolent spirits who fostered evil in those people around whom they swarmed. I’ve since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural...

If there’s nothing to learn because we know it all, what’s the challenge? Why would the effort matter? What would be the point? – Odd Thomas

I was like a thought slipping through the fissures…

Some people like to hear themselves talk, but I like to hear myself silent.

The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded.

In the war, to survive, you had to be responsible every minute of every day, unhesitatingly responsible for yourself, for your every action. You had to be responsible for your buddies, too, because survival wasn’t...

Of course, I don’t know everything. Considering the infinite amount of knowledge that one could acquire in a virtually innumerable array of intellectual disciplines, it’s probably more accurate to say that I don’t know anything.

All these girls swooning over hunky vampires, what they really want is to give away their freedom, to be controlled and told what to do and not have to think — and never die, of...

Now take my hand and hold it tight.I will not fail you here tonight,For failing you, I fail myselfAnd place my soul upon a shelfIn Hell’s library without light.I will not fail you here tonight.

Home was not a perfect place. But it was the only home they had and they could hope to make it better.