Quotes from Harlan Coben

Only bad writers think they're good.

I used to wonder why Lucy liked those songs so much. You know what I mean? She sits in the dark and listens and cries. Music does that to her...I didn't understand for a long time. But I do now. The sad songs are a safe hurt. It's a diversion. It's controlled. And maybe it helps you imagine that real pain will be like that. But it's not. Lucy knows that, of course. You can't prepare for real pain. You just have to let it rip you apart.

So basically, that entire theory is blown to hell. Not basically, Win corrected. Entirely.

The truth may be better than lies... But it doesn't always set you free.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.

I kept hearing that better to have loved and lost bullshit. Another falsehood. Trust me, it is not better. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down

Getting into a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a school teacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers. She slapped my back. Welcome to high school.

Doctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.

They say possesions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

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.

Every person has hopes and dreams.

I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.

desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers

But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn't that clear. It is dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you're moving slowly, not sure which direction you're heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You don't realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.

Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.

Sad songs are a safe hurt. It's a diversion. It's controlled. And maybe it helps you imagine that real pain will be like that. But it's not. You can't prepare for real pain. You just have to let it rip you apart.

This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.

The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.

the cardinal rule: You never have to take back words you don't say.

There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, for sure,but for the most part we block - we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn't that they can't accept the truth - its that they can't block it.

We all play God every day. When a woman buys a new pair of expensive shoes, she could have spent that same money feeding someone who was starving. In a sense, those shoes mean more to her than a life. We all kill to make our lives more comfortable. We don't put it in those terms. But we do.