A blog dedicated to providing quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential (and quotable!) authors of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). If you do not know much about GKC, I suggest visiting the webpage of the American Chesterton Society as well as this wonderful Chesterton Facebook Page by a fellow Chestertonian

I also have created a list detailing examples of the influence of Chesterton if you are interested, that I work on from time to time.

(Moreover, for a list of short GKC quotes, I have created one here, citing the sources)

"...Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility."

-Heretics (1905)
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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Dean Koontz discusses Chesterton's influence on him

An excerpt from a three-page interview which bestselling author Dean Koontz gave to Gilbert Magazine (December 2009)
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GM: You have talked elsewhere about Chesterton. What was the first Chesterton book you read and how did it influence you?


DK: Orthodoxy, and it had a powerful effect. Then I read The Everlasting Man, which I think was the better of the two. Together they were like a one-two punch.


GM: What role did Chesterton play in your decision to become Catholic?


DK: I actually converted early, when I was about nineteen or twenty. I found Chesterton a couple of decades later, and he had a profound role. There is a deep and rigorous intellectual community and background in the Church, and Chesterton was the ideal of that, following the initial appeal of faith.


GM: Has Chesterton's precision of language influenced your writing?


DK: The precision of his language, the clarity of his thought, his exuberant nature, and his delight in tweaking the humorless who are humorless because of their dour materialism- all of those things influenced my writing. I just finished a novel titled Breathless, which comes out in November and opens with a Chesterton quote.

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