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.

Don’t you love your mother, dear?””I guess so. A hard, sharp, thorny kind of love that might be pity more than anything else.

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.

Terror and pleasure are linked in us. We are a baldly miswired species, Martie. Terror delights us, both the experience of terror and the dealing out of it to others. We are healthier if we...

Her stare was direct and unwavering, full of confidence earned from painful experience…

Life had been hard on this girl, Jacob, but she had enough courage for an army.

Maybe magic and love, together, can achieve what magic alone cannot.

Evil travels the world in anonymity, its presence revealed only by the periodic consequences of its desires…

We don’t have time for such uncertainty because it reliably breeds indecision, and indecision is one of the mothers of failure.

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

It’s funny, ma’am, how sometimes you’re so sarcastic but it doesn’t sting.””Because of my dimples. Dimples are a get-out-of-jail-free card

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...

People who were perfectly sane on Tuesday sometimes go nuts on Wednesday.

In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.

Hope lies in action

Ah, sir, that’s just mean. She’s not a Victoria’s Secret model, but she’s pretty in her way.

This isn’t a reasoned response to a configuration of stars, but the heart cannot flourish on logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you don’t overdose

He’s a man,” Themla said.”I guess that explains it.””Hairy, Neanderthalic,” Thelma said, “perpetually half-crazed from excessive levels of testosterone, plagued by racial memories of the lost glory of mammoth-hunting expeditions – they’re all alike.

In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not...

Out of sight above the house, the mirror moon reflected the sun of a day not yet dawned, shining the pale light of tomorrow on the yard and on the paper birches.

As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work – and it’s author – in bondage.

Holy men tell us life is a mystery.They embrace that concept happily.But some mysteries bite and barkand come to get you in the dark.

I had not asked to be born. Only to be loved.

Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don’t make me go through high school...

When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching...

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

What has been is no more. Change has come.

People scare me more than anything, for I know too well the savagery of which humankind is capable.

Even if there are moments during the day when all seems normal and when every action of your own and of those around you seems to be unremarkable, the appearance of ordinariness is an illusion,...

Translating the words on the door, he said, “Light from light.” “Waste and void, waste and void. Darkness on the face of the deep,” I said. “Then God commanded light. The light of the world...

I’d had much practice turning my mind away from certain memories of my childhood. I could quickly dial her remembered voice from a whisper to a silence.

Narcissists are everywhere in this ripe age of self-love, which amazes me because so much in life would seem to foster humility.

To believe in luck, you must believe that the universe is a roulette wheel and that instead of paying out to us what we have earned, it pays out only what it wishes. But it...

Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed...

Jocko likes salty, Jocko likes sweet, but never bring Jocko any hot sauce, like with jalapenos, because it makes Jocko squirt funny-smelling stuff out his ears.

Your past is my Future.

Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your...

With lead he shaded love into the woman’s eyes.

Although he never speaks of how or what or why, I know that his childhood was difficult, that his parents broke his heart. Books and excess poundage are his insulation against pain.

Stormy Llewellyn, a woman of unconventional views, believes instead that our passage through this world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to...

Grief can destroy you –or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it...

Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry...