Quotes from Harlan Coben

On the side of the concrete wall, someone had long ago painted the words TIRE SERVICE in red and blue. The letters were faded now, beaten and stripped by years of sun.

If someone is meeting you in their "study," they have money.

There are bagels," Mom said, in case both his eyes and olfactory nerves had shorted out. "Your father picked them up this morning. From Livingston Bagels, Myron. Remember? The one on Northfield Avenue? Near Two Gondoliers Pizzeria?" Myron

Years ago, Myron had found this all somewhat poignant and oddly comforting—the war relic now housing artists—but the world was different now. In the eighties and nineties, it had all been cute and quaint. Now this "progress" felt like phony symbolism. Near

Coach Phil's shorts probably fit him okay twenty, thirty pounds ago. His red polo shirt with the word "Coach" stitched in script across the left breast was also snug enough to double as sausage casing. He had the look of an ex-jock gone to seed, which, Maya surmised, he probably was. He was big and intimidating, and his size probably scared people. Keeping

Broome could argue, but he had no leverage here. He was also a one-in-the-hand, don't-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth kind of guy.

If you cross the street to avoid a gang of black teens, you're racial profiling; if you don't cross because you're afraid you'll look like a racist, you're racial profiling; if you see the gang and think nothing whatsoever, you're from some planet I've never visited. What

Spoon came up next to me. The cop frowned his disapproval with everything he had. Not just his mouth frowned. All of him joined in. He had a unibrow and Cro-Magnon forehead. They frowned too. He glared at Spoon, then turned it back at me. "And you are?" "I'm

Stagger's whole being emanated exhaustion. His eyes were red and sunken. His normal five o'clock shadow had darkened into something closer to midnight. His shoulders stooped like a buzzard too tired to go after its prey. "You

Win nodded. "Open the glove compartment. Arm yourself like a paranoid despot. This may get ugly." Myron

True," Adam said. "But I can read numbers, Bob. Logan's overall score was a six-point-seven. Jimmy only has a score of six-point-four. Even with today's new math, six-point-seven is greater than six-point-four. I can show you with a graph if that would help." Gaston

They were heading into the wooded areas of the mountains. The elevation was causing Adam's ears to clog up.

He had learned a valuable lesson about physical confrontations: You can predict nothing. Sure, whoever lands the first blow usually wins. The bigger man was usually victorious too. But once it got going, once the red tornado took hold of the combatants, anything could happen. The

The murder of Valerie Simpson." Myron looked over at Duane. "I don't know nothing," Duane said. Dimonte sat down, making a big production out of it. King Lear. "Then you won't mind answering a few questions?" Duane

He and Corinne were such a couple, such a unit, that the idea of her running away someplace without him or their family was completely anathema to him.

In the ultimate pursuit of knowledge, you can easily become ignorant.

Brett told me you spy on him," Hester said. Brett and his big mouth, she thought. Wonderful. "I monitor his online activity." "You say tomato, I say tomahto.

The familiar voice made Megan automatically smile. The voice still had the sexy rasp of whiskey, cigarettes, and late nights, where every utterance had a hint of a laugh and a dollop of a double entendre.

From the left—the kitchen—someone stepped into view.

What made me pause here was the pure dichotomy.

He spotted Linda Coldren in a private grandstand tent overlooking the eighteenth hole. She wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low. Myron looked up at her. She did not look back. Her expression was one of mild confusion, like she was working on a math word problem or trying to recall the name behind a familiar face. For some reason, the expression troubled Myron. He stayed in her line of vision, hoping she'd signal to him. She didn't. Tad

She stopped, dazed. "Who are these two?" she asked Taylor. "We, uh, found them loitering around," Taylor said. "We thought maybe they were the perpetrators." For a second, Mrs. Kent stared at us as though we were pieces in a puzzle she couldn't put together. "These

Lorraine fiddled with the unlit cigarette. The moms went back to their inane chatter, though with less enthusiasm. They constantly sneaked glances at Lorraine, as if she were some virus introduced into their suburban life-form with a mission to destroy it.

He dialed the number. It was picked up on the third ring. "Good afternoon, Mr. Goldberg!" Reason one for his hesitation: The guy's voice gave him the heebie-jeebies. The man—he sounded really young—was unfailingly polite and spoke in exclamation points, as though he were trying out for an old-time musical. The sound chilled Goldberg. But there was more to it than that. There