Quotes By Dean Koontz

In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.

I've not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

I try not to spend too much time on partisan politics. Life's too short for that. I don't really believe that there have been many human problems solved by politics.

Never, never try to scope the market.

One of the things I like enormously about Bob Weinstein is that that he's the only studio head I have ever known who will change his mind and say he was wrong.

If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.

Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.

Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.

If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.

I believe that I was a dog in a past life. That's the only thing that would explain why I like to snack on Purina Dog Chow.

I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence - I find that offensive. I think that's potentially damaging to society.

We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.

I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored.

Your mind always does worse things than people can show in a movie.

Because people see violence on the movie screen, they're not going to go out and hold up a liquor store and kill somebody. It really doesn't correlate.

A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.

Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life.

There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.

Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

Civilization rests on the fact that most people do the right thing most of the time.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

My wife is my first audience. She's a tough lady, so I can't say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.

Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.