Quotes from Harlan Coben

If I have to cheer for you to know I'm proud," Dad once told Myron, "then I'm doing something wrong." Never

I actually had to close my eyes, rub them

Grief can be inordinately selfish.

They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy. There

He passed a hair salon called Snip Away, which sounded more like a vasectomy clinic than a beauty parlor.

The early morning flight to Boise was uneventful. We took off from LaGuardia, which could be a lousier airport but not without a serious act of God. I got my customary seat in economy class, the one behind a tiny old lady who insists on reclining her seat against my knees for the duration of the flight. Studying her gray follicles and pallid scalp—her head was practically in my lap—helped distract me. Squares

You hear about adrenaline, how it spurs you on and gives you uncanny strength, but there's a flip side. The feeling is heady, out of control. It heightens your senses to the point of paralysis. You have to harness the power or it'll choke you down.

But the irony would not hold. Schoolyards were not about innocence. There were bullies down there too and sociopaths-in-waiting and burgeoning psychoses and young minds filled prenatally with undiluted hate. Okay

They think my male helplessness is cute. When a single mother does any of those things, she is neglectful and on the receiving end of the superior moms' scorn.

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.

Each writer had a bedroom in the main house and a shack or "work cottage" in which to write. We all met up for dinner at night. That was it. There was no Internet, no TV, no phones, yes lights, but no motorcar, not a single luxury.

Every kid, Megan thought, is a frustrated lawyer, finding loopholes, demanding impossible levels of proof, attacking even the most minute of minutia.

They say that happens a lot with the elderly that ? to paraphrase Springsteen ? two hearts become one. When one dies, the other follows.

Confusion helps. Confusion leads to lengthy reconstruction and clarification and exposition and several other ions.

There is a fine line between a coffee break and a crack house.

People had long memories. No matter how many years passed, he would always be the subject of whispers and innuendos.

Worn tires and ripped mattresses lay like war wounded in the middle of the road. Big chunks of cement peeked out from the high grass. There were stripped cars and while there were no fires burning, maybe there should have been.

Hoyt?" Hoyt turned back around. "So there's no misunderstanding," Carlson said. "I don't believe a word you just said. We clear?" "Crystal," Hoyt said.

Hell, I want to Hugh Jackman a sponge bath. So what? You can;t help what you want. You're human. Let it go.

Perception is often more important than reality.

People—old, young, black, white, men, women—hung everywhere, spineless, flopped over like Dali clocks.

For the first eighteen years of my life, I have zero memories that aren't entangled in you. We shared a womb; then we shared a room. There was, in fact, nothing we did not share. I told you everything. Everything. There is nothing I kept from you. There is nothing I was embarrassed or ashamed to tell you because I knew you'd still love me. For everyone else, there is a bit of a facade. There has to be. But with you and me, there was none. I

After three rings the machine picked up. Win's annoyingly superior accent said, "Hang up without leaving a message and die." Beep. Myron shook his head, smiled, and, as always, left a message. He

We stayed a step behind the three boys. Every once in a while they would turn around and look at us, wondering, I guess, why we were following them. Sometimes they stared openly at Ema. There may have been derision in their eyes, I couldn't say for sure. Ema was decked out in her customary black—black clothes, black hair, black nail polish, black lipstick. Tattoos ran up and down her arms and across her neck. I