Quotes from Harlan Coben

Someone is always worse off than you. That never seemed like much comfort.

Myron likes to say that even the ugliest truth is better than the prettiest of lies.

No, in the Bolitar household, the kitchen was more a gathering place - a Family Room Lite, if you will - than anything related to even the basest of the culinary arts. The round table held magazines and catalogs and congealing white boxes of Chinese takeout. The stove top saw less action than a Merchant-Ivory production. The oven was a prop, strictly for show, like a politician's Bible.

At one time, this might have been a nice area, but now the neighborhood looked like a man who'd lost his job and stopped bathing.

He traveled back again, to when she was that adorable teenager dominating center court, and his favorite Yiddish expression came back to him in a rush: Man plans, God laughs. This was not a kind laugh. "Kitty?

We started down the tunnel. I wondered how something like this had been built. No way it passed Kasselton code. Did Lizzy Sobek hire construction workers? I doubted it. Did volunteers work on it? Did those "chosen" by the Abeona Shelter build this tunnel? Maybe. Maybe my father helped build it. But

Tragedy sort of works this way: Once it snakes its way in, it cuts down all your defenses and allows its brethren easy access to feed.

When Myron was ten years old, his father had taken him and his younger brother, Brad, to a game. Brad was five at the time. Dad had secured

The name of the group was Survivor," Win said. "Ironic name when you think of how quickly they vanished, no?

Just because you do right doesn't mean that wrong won't still find you.

Some people are conduits for misery.

Myron sipped his coffee. Gourmet coffee. A year ago he never drank coffee. Then he started stopping into one of the new coffee bars that kept cropping up like bad movies on cable.

I ran down the hill. I went to your place, afraid, I don't know. I just didn't know. But you were gone. I came here, to Lucy. I thought maybe you'd be hiding inside or something. I waited. But you never showed, of course. I searched for you.For years. I didn't know if you were dead or alive. I saw your face on every street, in every bar.

On the radio a rock group called the Motels were repeatedly singing the ingenious line Take the L out of lover, and it's over. Deep. Literal, but still deep. The Motels. Whatever happened to them?

The decor was nice in a fake-rustic, Martha Stewart sort of way. The furniture was what they called "simple country" where the look was indeed simple and the price outrageous. Lots of pines and wickers and antiques and dry flowers. The smell of potpourri was strong and cloying. They

He moved from shrub to shrub. Some of the shrubs were familiar from his last sojourn into these parts. He said hello to them, chatted, offered up his best cocktail-party banter. One shrub gave him a stock tip. Myron ignored it. He circled closer to the Coldren house, slowly, still careful not to be seen. He had no idea what he was going to do, but when he got close enough to see a light on in the den, an idea came to him. A

I look at the helpless bundle in the crib and she looks up at me and I wonder what I would not do to protect her. I would lay down my life in a second. And truth be told, if push came to shove, I would lay down yours too.

He had the bone-weary look of a survivor who wasn't so sure the dead weren't the lucky ones. He rambled back over toward Myron and unlocked the handcuffs. "Go," he said. Myron

I remember everything about her. The way she looked. The way she smelled. The way she'd come home from her job so tired she could barely put her feet up. I don't think I've talked about her five times in the past twenty years. But I think about her every day. I think about why she gave me up. And I think about why I still miss her.

A tip jar read: FEAR CHANGE. LEAVE IT WITH US.

Some things we pack away, stick in the back of the closet, never expect to see again—but we can't quite make ourselves discard them. Like

They needed some Jews or gays or something to spice things up, to add a bit of theater and a couple of interesting bistros.

I don't remember how big the balloons were. I was a kid then. Everything looks bigger when you're a kid.

Another pause. Cameras pirouetted. Myron looked around. All the lenses were aiming down from up high, glaring at him like hostile space aliens or lunchroom monitors.