Quotes from Harlan Coben

Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.

Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God's blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

Esperanza's side had so many colors, Crayola sent a scout.

Todavía oigo aquella sandez del «mejor haber amado y haber perdido». Otra mentira más. Créanme si les digo que no es mejor. Que no me enseñen el paraíso para cerrarlo después.

Certain problems cannot be solved if you are constantly entertained and distracted.

You're not a hypocrite. You aim toward lofty heights. The fact that your arrow cannot always reach them does not make you a hypocrite.

When I got home, I poured myself one last quick drink. I took a deep sip and let the warm liquor travel to destinations well known. Yes, I drink. But I'm not a drunk. That's not denial. I know I flirt with being an alcoholic. I also know that flirting with alcoholism is about as safe as flirting with a mobster's underage daughter. But so far, the flirting hasn't led to coupling. I'm smart enough to know that might not last. Chloe

We all want to convince ourselves that it is about hard work and education and perseverance, but the truth is, life is much more about the fickle and the random. We don't want to admit it, but we are controlled by luck, by timing, by fate.

I want to say something comforting, but I know that this is one of the moments when words would be like an appendix—superfluous or harmful.

We are all so luxuriously stupid when things are good in our life.

Love your parents - while we are busy growing up, they are growing old.

Sitting for an hour without reading material meant he had to think.

The world is nothing but a bunch of thin lines separating what we think are extremes.

They're politicians,' Win said. 'They'd lie and evade if you asked them what they had for breakfast.

looked me straight in the eye and spoke an indisputable truth: You don't know my life.

There is no place more hollow, more soulless, than a school at night. The building had been created for life, for constant motion, for students rushing back and forth, some confident, most scared, all trying to figure out their place in the world. Take that away and you might as well have a body drained of all its blood.

Jared was her son and the "co-general manager" of the Yankees—co meaning shares the title with someone who knows what he's doing because he got the job through nepotism.

The house had the stale smell of a grandparent. When you're a kid, the smell gives you the creeps; when you're an adult, you want to bottle it and let it out with a cup of cocoa on a bad day.

We don't pray in foxholes because we are ready to meet our Maker. We pray because we don't want to.

Memory makes demands that you often can't keep. Memory is faulty because it insists on filling in the blanks.

Mental illnesses are so strange. A physical problem we can understand. But when the mind works irrationally, well, by its very definition, the rational mind cannot truly relate.

When you're young, you think you have all the answers. You're right wing or you're left wing and the other side is a bunch of idiots. You know. When you get a little older, though, you start to more and more see the grays. Now I understand that true idiots are the ones who are certain they have the answers. It is never that simple. Do you know what I mean?

Children view their parents as both intrepid and omnipotent.