Quotes from Harlan Coben

Peter Flannery had that athlete-gone-to-seed look. His once-golden locks had thinned and fled. His features were malleable. He wore a rayon three-piece suit—I hadn't seen one in a while—and the vest even had the pocket watch attached to a faux gold chain.

The big-haired waitress returned. She asked what they were having. Ray ordered pancakes, nothing else. Fester ordered a breakfast that included every food group on every chart ever made. It took nearly two full minutes to say it all. Ray wondered if the order came with a side of Lipitor. When

There was such a feeling of innocence here, of make-believe, of youth, of startling passion. But that was the beauty of such a university: students debating over life-and-death issues in an environment as insulated as Disney World. Reality had nothing to do with the equation. And that was okay. In fact, that was how it should be.

She knows this is your hockey time, right?" "Right." "So she should know better." "It's just a text, Mo." "You bust your balls at the hospital all week," he said, with that small smile that never let you know for sure if he was kidding or not. "This is hockey time, sacred time. She should know that by now." Mo

His eyes still had the ice blue of youth, and he aimed them my way.

It was how pitiful and weak this act of dominance made his father look, how, even though she was on the receiving end, his mother had manipulated his father into becoming something so pathetic that he had to resort to doing something so out of character, so not him. Adam

A classmate had told Kimberly about the site. You didn't really have to do anything with the guys, she'd been told. They just wanted young girls for the company. Heidi almost laughed out loud at that one. Men, as Heidi knew all too well and Kimberly quickly learned, never really just wanted company. That was merely the loss leader to get you in the store. Heidi

Maybe it was just because she was so pretty. Maybe I'm just as shallow as the next guy. Or maybe it was because the lonely can sometimes sense the lonely. Maybe what drew me to her was the fact that, like me, she seemed to want to keep to herself. I

The great thing about the Internet: It gives everyone a voice. The bad thing about the Internet: It gives everyone a voice.

I love the hybrid quality, the new computer sections and the books yellowing with age. Libraries for me have always had a cathedral-like ambiance, a hushed sanctuary where learning is revered, where we the people elevate books and education to the level of the religious.

your child comes to you hardwired, that in the battle of nature vs nurture, nature kicks complete and total ass

He wanted to ask why, but the question was so obvious, just hanging out there within easy view, that to voice it would be redundant.

Broome introduced Flynn to Erin. Erin nodded and then put her head back down. Erin had never been good with the families of victims. "They're broken," Erin had told him before. Broome looked now into Flynn's eyes and thought "shattered" was more accurate. "Broken" suggested something clean and all the way through and fixable. But what happened to them was messier, more abstract, filled with shards and no hope of recovery.

The shame of cowardice never leaves.

The cast on his leg had been enormous and about as comfortable as wearing a jockstrap made of tweed. He hobbled around for months, listening to Sara tease him. "Stop imitating my limp. It's not a very nice thing to do." "Great.

But how did you even know about it?" "Pardon?" "My daughter didn't say anything about calling the police. So how would you know . . . ?" She stopped. Her mind traveled down a few possible paths. All of them were pretty dark. "Mrs.

Yiddish proverb: Man plans, God laughs.

The girl at the door was young. Eighteen, twenty, something like that. Nope, not a Jehovah's Witness. Didn't have that scooped-out-brain smile.

He loved her. She loved him. Simple but there you have it. You have careers and you raise kids and there are victories and defeats and you just sort of coast along, living your life, the days long. The years short, and then every once in a while, you remember to pull up and look at your partner, you life partner, really look at the one who travels down the lonely road right by your side, and you realize how much you are in this together.

During the pregame warm-up—the part where you skate in a circle and stretch—Mo had elbowed him and nodded toward where Tia sat and said, "Nice sweater puppies." That

Flannery still wouldn't look at me. I didn't like that. Flannery was the kind of guy who lived for the Willy Loman world of shined shoes and eye contact. I knew the type. I didn't want anything to do with them, but I knew them.

She didn't want to raise suspicions, so she started chatting about the usual suburban inanities: kid sports, the father-coach who favored his own kid, the teachers who gave too much/too little homework, the new online school-lunch ordering system.

A beating hurts for a little while. The shame of cowardice never leaves.

The arm was the worst of it; it felt as though it'd been mangled by a tiger and then jammed into a blender set on pulverize. A blacksmith was mercilessly using her skull as an anvil. Her tongue and mouth had the dryness of both the Sahara and the worst hangover imaginable. Megan