Quotes from Harlan Coben

For the first time Mike felt on the downside of life's roller coaster—the back nine of life, as his golfer friends put it. You know it, of course. When you hit thirty-five or forty, you know on one level that you are no longer the physical specimen you once were. But denial is a pretty powerful thing. Now, at the tender of age of forty-six, he knew that no matter what he did, the slide would not only continue but accelerate. Cheerful thought. The

Mayor Gusherowski approached Adam with a Guy Smiley smile—the perfect blend of game show host and Muppet.

Awareness started to creep in, clawing its way past the pain and numbness. He was lying on cold ground, his right cheek on a rough, hard floor. Concrete maybe. Adam tried to open his eyes, but it felt like spiders had spun webs across them. When he blinked hard, a fresh surge of pain nearly made him gasp out loud. When

Myron swiveled toward a voice like warm honey on Sunday pancakes. With her long, purposeful stride - not the shy-girl walk of the too-tall or the nasty strut of a model - Brenda Slaughter swept into the room like a radar-tracked weather system.

At half-court, the goateed Sandy Duncan started calling for Ted again. His coterie followed suit. The name Ted bounced around the arena like rolled-up balls of Silly Putty.

I'm not going to stop digging," Myron said. Wickner adjusted his cap again and began to walk away. "Then more people are going to die." There was no threat in his tone, just the stilted, pained timber of inevitability.

this. Evil exists because an airheaded bimbo, who started life as a man's rib, got tricked into eating a piece of bad fruit by a talking reptile.

As they continued to wind through the crowd, a few women met Myron's gaze and held it, though not as many as one, two, five years ago. He felt like an aging pitcher who needed this particular radar gun to tell him that his fastball was losing velocity. Or maybe there was something else at work here.

Her rise had been nothing short of meteoric—but nowhere near as meteoric as the tennis world's expectations of her. Her subsequent fall—at least, up until the time of the breakdown—was slow and painful. Not at all like yours. Your fall, if you don't mind me using that word, was far swifter. Guillotinelike. One minute you were the Celtics' number one draft pick. The next minute you were finished.

killing the allegorical two birds with one stone, which was a really violent and weird image when you stopped and thought about it. You throw a stone and kill two birds—and this is a good thing?

They headed out the front door. Myron kept his eyes on the For Sale sign as though it might suddenly brandish a gun.

I stayed locked inside a windowless environment, sickened by the lack of sunshine like some dour owl.

We take for granted what we become used to. Human nature.

You could see Coach Bobby working the name, as if his forehead had a window and the squirrel running on the little track was picking up speed. When the synapses stopped firing, Coach Bobby's grin practically ripped the boy-band goatee at the corners.

who always had a beautiful girl on his arm. You get used to lying, Myron. It gets easier, you know what I mean? The lies become a sort of second reality.

That was melodramatic, of course. Pure hyperbole. But if hyperbole couldn't feel free to roam in his head, where could it roam? The

Mayor Gusherowski approached Adam with a Guy Smiley smile—the perfect blend of game show host and Muppet. "Wonderful to meet you, Adam!" He gave Adam the perfunctory too-enthusiastic handshake, adding that little pull toward him that politicians believed made the recipient feel somehow inferior or obligated. "Can I call you Adam?" "Sure, Mr. Mayor." "Oh

He put his foot up on the lowest bench, leaned onto his knee, and took a few seconds to scan our faces. "I believe in all of you. I believe in this team. And I believe we can still achieve great things this season." Absolute silence. "Okay

Cingle had her feet up on her desk. She had on cowboy boots that added another two inches to her height and dark jeans that fit like leggings. Up top, she wore a black turtleneck that on some women would be considered clingy but on Cingle could legitimately draw a citation for indecency.

Do you need anything, Mr. Pierce?" the young associate asked him. She was a recent Stanford Law grad and gorgeous and chipper and full of life, and you wondered when life would beat it out of her. It always did in the end. That kind of enthusiasm wouldn't last.

People say college opens the world to you. In some ways, of course, that's true. But for the most part, it does the opposite. You come in thinking you can do anything when you leave. Your options are endless. Point of fact though, your options dwindle every day you're here. By the time you graduate, again, reality has splash-landed.

Esperanza looked around the room. Then she spoke out loud so that Myron would hear her through the phone. "About a hundred guys in here fit your description," she said. "It's like asking me to find an implant in a strip club." Myron

Rocco was the kind of gigantic it was hard to fathom, so that each time you saw him, you were struck anew by the sheer size of him. When he strolled around Cornelius's apartment, Simon half expected to hear fee-fie-fo-fum à la "Jack and the Beanstalk.

Where's Vickie?" Vickie was Cora's daughter. "She's spending the night at the McMansion with my ex and his horse-faced wife. Or as I prefer to put it, she's spending the night in the bunker with Adolf and Eva." Grace