Ted Dekker

“Though being freed from sin, most remain slaves, blinded and gagged by their own deception.”

“Kmart special over here--one bad man with a stocking over his head, holding up a night crawler with a wallet. Give me your gun, buster.”

“Look at me, see how I resemble a puddle of dog vomit? Won't you please throw your fingers to your teeth and be wildly fascinated by me?”

“And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?”

“How can you hope to recognize good and evil for what they truly are if you have no belief in a moral authority greater than yourself?”

“Make sure your soul is attached at all times - this town will steal it in a second, given the chance.”

“Nothing was worse than reading too late and falling asleep two or three pages into a novel.”

“Then as now, evil begins its courtship cloaked in light. And the heart embraces what is should flee. Forgetting it once had a true lover. Love will prove greater than lust. Sacrifice will overcome seduction. And blood will flow.”

“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Halleluiah amen, you are dismissed.”

“Their lust to win the love of mortals away from God knows no bounds.”

“God is with me. Jesus is near. The Spirit is greater than my fear.”

“Everything I've written up to this point is crap. Now I'm going to write the real one”

“...most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.”

“When you step away from it all, you lose perspective.”

“Knowing you’re worthless doesn’t give you value any more than knowing you are a captive sets you free.”

“He was as needy as she was. Alvin Finch only wanted to be needed. Loved. And absent of either, he resorted to deflecting his pain by killing. Just like a teenager might resort to deflecting the pain of rejection by cutting. People did a lot of crazy things to be wanted.”

“The world didn’t like to look at the dark underside very often. But that didn’t change the ugliness; it only ensured that those who perpetuated the ugliness were left alone to kill and maim and rape.”

“Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost always outcasts. The intelligent are bullied on the playground. They see the world differently and are shunned for it. They nearly all turn out to be lonely at the least, locked up at the worst. It's human nature to encourage the status quo and shun those who see life differently.”

“It's the sorrow you feel that allows you to crave love. Without the suffering, there would be no true pleasure. Without tears, no joy. Without deficiency, no longing. This is the secret of the human heart, Rom.”

“Yes, I drank some of the ancient blood and it changed me. If I'm right...If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.”

“But sometimes imperfect tools lead us toward perfect ends.”

“But what was possible or practical had been replaced by a far baser impulse. Hope.”

“In the space of so many scant hours, a new world had lifted the hem of her skirts before him. A world of seething pleasures and sweaty rage.”

“I have a confession.""Oh?""I can't get you off my mind."His statement robbed her of words. Heat spread down the nape of her neck. He was saying too much. ~Thomas to Chelise”

“Living is about clucking your tongue and enjoying the sound.~Slater”

“To love in any way is to be like a child—it means to be vulnerable, to be wide-eyed, to be selfless. There is no such thing as free love; love is the mostcostly expression in the world. To love romantically is to give ofoneself fully and completely, a merging and meshing of souls sothat the twain become a unity. It is to allow the sense of wonderto fully enrapture.”

“The problem with any philosophical consideration is that once you open a door in your mind, you can never close it. Once you learn something, you can never convince your mind that you didn't learn it. If you learn the world is round, you can never fit in with a world that thinks it's flat.”

“Our lives hang in the balance of unpredictable situations. One minute you're driving down the road whistling a tune, the next moment the car right in front of you spins out of control and crashes. How you prepare for those unpredictable occurrences determines whether you live or die. Always leave an empty lane to your right or left for escape.”

“Perfect, that's our plan then. But you'll have to give up being a priest first. I wouldn't want to just sit around whispering and sipping hot chocolate.”

“There’s different ways to be impacted by truth. One is to read the scriptures. Another is to read other works by other people who have read the scriptures, non fiction for example. Another is to do studies. Another is to go to a place of worship. Another thing is to sit and listen to someone who’s speaking. There’s all kinds of ways. Another way is to write. About the truth. Discover the struggle through your character.”

“There’s a reason we are drawn to the light. A reason why we fear darkness. It’s important to be terrified and unnerved about certain things. That way we will choose another path. The path that leads us to truth and love.”

“Suffering is an oxymoron. There is unfathomable peace and satisfaction in suffering for Christ. It is as though you have searched endlessly for your purpose in life and now found it in the most unexpected place: In the death of your flesh. It is certainly a moment worth of laughter and dance. And in the end it is not suffering at all. The apostle Paul recommended that we find joy in it. Was he mad?”

“Wage war on death. Live for love.”

“Keep your words. This pain is no life." "You only feel pain because you're alive, boy!" the keeper thundered. "This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of the cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!”

“There's always risk in life's most rewarding pursuits, isn't there?”

“I think a woman is born with the desire to hear she is beautiful.”

“I've already said you can't take anything from me that I wouldn't freely give you.”

“A Christian in many American circles, for example, means 'right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats.' As such, a pacifist Democrat who called himself a Christian in those circles, would be lying, albeit unwittingly. To most of this world, America is Christian, just as to most Americans being an Arab means being a Muslim. Both labels have only limited usefulness.I have been called a Christian writer, but I'm not a right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats, not by a long shot. So am I a Christian? Yes and no - it depends on what Christian means to you. . . But labels are almost impossible to shed.”

“The battle over flesh and blood cannot compare to the battle for the heart.”

“Evil was predictable, always painfully expected.”

“no one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For every one behind bars, another ten deserved to be behind bars, but that would put one in ten Americans behind bars.”

“He read reports, examined evidence, and poured more reports up the chain than the Pentagon could read. Nothing short of a human sieve. But in the end he was just one small piece on this game board called war. End of story”

“Will you follow me, Darsal? Will you Silvie? Will you both follow me to hell and back because two fuzzy white bats told me you should?”

“Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.”

“The pain was so deep and so raw. There were days I would have died just to forget. The problem was, I couldn't figure out how to get her out of my mind. How do you kill that kind of pain?”

“Immanuel, God with us-that He would leave the spiritual realm and be present in the flesh and blood in such an act of humility is a staggering notion. As it is, He willingly gave His blood, in the flesh, so that others might find life, for it is written: "He did not come by water only, but by blood," and "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission." Now blood is required to give new life to the dead. I tell you, He did not give only a small amount to satisfy this requirement. He was beaten and crushed and pierced until that blood flowed like a river for the sake of love. It was for love, not religion, that He died. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins. And those plunged beneath that watery grave to drink of His blood will never be the same.”

“She was having some difficulty piecing together exactly why she deserved to be in this place, but she wasn't stupid enough to deny that in the end life was cruel and didn't pay attention to what was fair.”

“And he wants you to keep that at the front of your mind? He wants you to stay focused on the darkest seasons of your life? How could that possibly do any good?'. . . He wants you to remember who delivered you from that time. That's the point of holding on to memory: delivery, not darkness.”

“Pain or perspective, that's the choice.'. . . You choose pain - you choose to fight it, deny it, bury it - then yes, the choice is always hard. But you choose perspective - embrace your history, give it credit for the better person it can make you, scars and all - the choice gets easier every time.”

“. . . your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not a part of the plan.”