Home > Author > Harlan Coben
161 " You could trust nature but not man. "
― Harlan Coben , Tell No One
162 " but when in doubt, you might as well keep an open mind. "
163 " We don’t pray in foxholes because we are ready to meet our Maker. We pray because we don’t want to. "
― Harlan Coben , Live Wire (Myron Bolitar, #10)
164 " Children view their parents as both intrepid and omnipotent. "
165 " But if Frank had wanted Pavel dead, he would have had Aaron do it. Pavel had been murdered between midnight and one. Aaron was dead by midnight. Myron mulled this over a bit and decided that Aaron’s being dead made it extremely unlikely he was the killer. "
― Harlan Coben , Drop Shot (Myron Bolitar, #2)
166 " Feeding teenage boys was like filling a bathtub with a grapefruit spoon. "
― Harlan Coben , The Stranger
167 " and then every once in a while, you remember to pull up and look at your partner, your life partner, really look at the one who travels down the lonely road right by your side, and you realize how much you are in this together. "
― Harlan Coben , Run Away
168 " I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew that the main house was about a quarter mile up the drive. I could leave my car here and walk it. See what’s what. But what would be the point? I hadn’t been up here in six years. The retreat probably sold the land, and the new owner probably craved privacy. That might explain all this. Still it didn’t feel right. What would be the harm, I thought, in going up and knocking on the door of the main house? Then again, the thick chain and no trespassing signs were not exactly welcome mats. I was still trying to decide what to do when a Kraftboro police cruiser pulled up next to me. Two officers got out. One was short and stocky with bloated gym muscles. The other was tall and thin with slicked-back hair and the small mustache of a guy in a silent movie. Both wore aviator sunglasses, so you couldn’t see their eyes. Short and Stocky hitched up his pants a bit and said, “Can I help you?” They both gave me hard stares. Or at least I think they were hard stares. I mean, I couldn’t see their eyes. “I "
― Harlan Coben , Six Years
169 " The house had the stale smell of a grandparent. When you’re a kid, the smell gives you the creeps; when you’re an adult, you want to bottle it and let it out with a cup of cocoa on a bad day. "
― Harlan Coben , One False Move (Myron Bolitar, #5)
170 " 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. "
171 " Do you believe in love at first sight? Neither do I. I do, however, believe in major, more-than-just-physical attraction at first sight. I believe that every once in a while—once, maybe twice in a lifetime—you are drawn to someone so deeply, so primordially, so immediately—a stronger-than-magnetic pull. That was how it was with Natalie. Sometimes that is all there is. Sometimes it grows and gathers heat and turns into a glorious inferno that you know is real and meant to last forever. And "
172 " He changed and worked out with weights. Throughout his adult life, Adam had cycled through a potpourri of workout programs—yoga (not flexible), Pilates (confused), boot camp (why not just join the military?), Zumba (don’t ask), aquatics (near drown), spin (sore butt)—but in the end, he always returned to simple weights. Some days he loved the strain on his muscles and couldn’t imagine not doing it. Other days he dreaded every moment, and the only thing he wanted to lift was the postworkout peanut butter protein shake to his lips. He "
173 " I can be over in ten minutes.” “You’ll stay for dinner?” “Depends on what’s on the tape,” I say. “Right, yeah, that makes sense.” Ellie hears something in my voice and knows me too well. “Everything else okay?” “We’ll talk.” I hang up first. "
― Harlan Coben , Don't Let Go
174 " I'm sorry," my dead wife mouthed. "
175 " Too often, show muscles meant useless muscles. "
176 " What I mean is, everything is pretty much decided by the time these children leave here and enter kindergarten. I can tell who will be successful and who will fail, who will end up happy and who will end up in prison, and ninety percent of the time I’m right. Maybe Hollywood and video games have an influence, I don’t know. "
― Harlan Coben , Darkest Fear (Myron Bolitar, #7)
177 " They say it takes a long time to comprehend a tragedy. You're numb. You can't adequately accept the grim reality. Again, that's not true. Not for me anyway. "
178 " Grief can be inordinately selfish. "
179 " Three days ago, I was a dedicated doctor sleepwalking through my own life. Since then, I had seen a ghost, gotten emails from the dead, had become a suspect in not one but two murders, was on the run from the law, had assaulted a police officer, and had enlisted the aid of a known dug dealer. "
180 " Intuition was often a way of cutting corners, a nifty technique of replacing hard evidence and facts with something far more elusive and capricious. The worst investigators Carlson knew relied on so-called intuition. "