The best Quotes by Harlan Coben

Writers & Poets

The best Quotes by Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben (born 4 January 1962 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists.

Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.

2

Before we go forward, we have to look back.

Gone for Good

1

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon!

1

You've made plenty of short stories long. But never, ever, have you made a long story short.

Promise Me

1

We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. But we don't care. We don't see. We just keep pushing.

The Stranger

1

Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.

Tell No One

1

Summer romances come to an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.

1

That's the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song.

Six Years

1

Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.

Fool Me Once

Talking Hearing & Listening

They say you never know how someone will react when the grenade is thrown.

Fool Me Once

But life changes people. It smothers that kind of larger-than-life woman. Time quiets them down. That firecracker girl you knew in high school - where is she now? It didn't happen to men as much. Those boys often grew up to be masters of the universe. The super successful girls? They seemed to die of slow societal suffocation.

Fool Me Once

Death is so close, always, a breath away, so perhaps it was wise to introduce children to that concept at an early age.

Fool Me Once

"Semper paratus." "It's Latin," Shane said. "It means 'Always ready'."

Fool Me Once

Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.

Fool Me Once

Doctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.

Fool Me Once

All around her, children and families played and laughed and reveled in the glory of this seemingly ordinary day. They did so without fear or care because they didn't get it. They all played and they all laughed and they felt so damn safe. They didn't see how fragile it all was.

Fool Me Once

It was obvious and a bit of cliché, but we don't really age in a straight line. We age in a circle, curving back to childhood, but in all the wrong ways.

Here is the truth about tragedy: it's good for the soul.

Tell No One

Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.

Tell No One

Sex Erotic Quotes

I kept hearing that "better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Another falsehood. Trust me, it is not better. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.

Tell No One

A beating hurts for a little while. The shame of cowardice never leaves.

Gone for Good

Love your parents - while we are busy growing up, they are growing old.

Perception is often more important than reality.

You look like several large orangutans made you their love slave.

Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.

You want people lined up, Will. You want the good guys on one side, the bad on the other. It doesn't work that way, does it? It is never that simple. Love, for example, leads to hate. I think that was what started it all. Primitive love.

Gone for Good

And bad stays. Bad doesn't go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal.

The Innocent

I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer from a waitress who looked as though she wanted to be in one of those want-to-get-away? commercials. She called me hon. I love when a waitress calls me hon.

The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.

"Terrific," Simon said. "The psychos are on my side."

Most religious people don't believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don't. We form whatever narrative we like - kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete - money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.

There are virtually no major life decisions you make that are not in some way based on your finances.

Some people are drawn to trouble. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.

I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.

The Stranger

A voice flat enough to fit under a door crack.

She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.

Gone for Good

Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.

Six Years

Kids don't do what their parents say - they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?

Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

Most were conspiracy nuts, the kind who think Elvis and Jimi Hendrix are jamming on some island off Fiji.

Gone for Good

Jimi Hendrix Elvis Presley Conspiracy Theories

This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.

The Innocent

Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy.

Six Years

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.

The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.

The world doesn't give even the slightest damn about us or our petty problems.

The Stranger

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

He didn't believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.

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Fool Me Once - Season 1 Episode 1

When you were born, you changed my life. I looked into your little face, and it was like everything that had gone before didn't matter anymore.

Megan Pierce in Stay Close - Season 1 Episode 1

Yvonne started humming the QuickGo jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find.

Gone for Good

Related pages to Harlan Coben

Fool Me Once

Gone for Good

Tell No One

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