Harlan Coben

“I have learned that human beings are all about incentives”

“The rule of thumb in student files seemed to be, "If you have nothing negative to say, don't say anything at all.”

“Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.”

“Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once”

“Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something”

“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy”

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

“That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song”

“No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.”

“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.”

“Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.”

“Everyone looks happy on Facebook.""I know, right? What's up with that?”

“We are often told during times of bereavement that time heals all wounds. That's crap. In truth, you are devastated, you mourn, you cry to the point where you think you'll never stop - and then you reach a stage where the survival instinct takes over. You stop. You simply won't or can't let yourself "go there" anymore because the pain was too great. You block. You deny. But you don't really heal.”

“A Spoon swoon, if you will.”

“Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.”

“You have heart disease, people understand. When the brain gets sick, well, it’s almost impossible to comprehend.”

“He truly believed that no one could love him, and no matter who you are, that hurts. It made you insecure. It made you want to hide and build fences”

“Dreams never die. Sometimes you think they are dead, but they are just hibernating lie some old bear. And, if the dream has been hibernating for a long time, that bear is going to wake up grumpy and hungry”

“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.”

“A voice flat enough to fit under a door crack.”

“You can only be strong for so long.”

“Kids don't come with instructions. We all mess up. Raising a child is pure impromptu.”

“Replicas never have the ghosts. They're bodies without souls.”

“Did tragedy cause fissures, open them wider--or did tragedy merely turn on the light so you could see the fissure that had always been there?”

“There's always a price you pay when you lie. Once you introduce a lie into a relationship, even for the best of intentions, it is always there. Whenever you’re with that person again, that lie is in the room too. It sits on your shoulder. Good lie or bad lie, it's in the room with you forever now. It's your constant companion.”

“Mrs. Friedman lived in a happy snow globe of AP History.”

“It was more about understanding that you could give it your all, give yourself the best chances, but control is an illusion.”

“Its funny how you can let yourself forget for seconds, how even in the heat of the horrible, you can have moments when you fool yourself into thinking it might all be okay”

“The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.”

“I look at her, then at Tasha, and I feel the wondrous blend of bliss and fear. They--bliss and fear--are constant companions. Rarely does one venture out without the other.”

“I read Parker's Spenser series in college. When it comes to detective novels, 90 percent of us admit he's an influence, and the rest of us lie about it.”

“I'm not sure we should get camera phones, that's all."She hit the remote and the car doors unlocked. She reached for the door handle. Matt hesitated.Olivia looked at him."What?" he asked."If we both get camera phones," Olivia said, "I could send you nuddies when you're at work."Matt opened the door. "Verizon on Sprint?"from The Innocent”

“Fame is more addictive than crack. Adults who lose fame--one-hit wonders, for example--usually tailspin into depression, though they try to act like they're above it. They don't want to admit the truth. Their whole life is a lie, a desperate scramble for another dose of that most potent of drugs. Fame”

“God, she loved this kid. Wendy had one of those waves, the ones that sneak up on parents and crush them and make them just want to wrap their arms around their kid and never let him go.”

“You bring your own weather to the picnic.”

“There was an old joke about being left on a deserted island with an editor. You are starving. All you have left is a glass of orange juice. Days pass. You are near death. You are about to drink the juice when the editor grabs the glass from your hand and pees into it. You look at him, stunned . "There," the editor says, handing you the glass. "It just needed a little tweaking.”

“I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better.”

“It was one lesson he never forgot.You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted.And you don't act like the goverment with their "proportional responses" and all that nonsense.If someone hurts you,mercy and pity must be put aside,You eliminate the enemy.You scorch the earth.”

“In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "Our defense will be...?" He looked to Matt for the answer/"Blame the other guy," Matt said."Which other guy?""Yes.""Huh?""We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO, the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter-Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled.""Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded."We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury end up knowing something went wrong but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed t and dotted i. We act like discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We are skeptical of EVERYONE.”

“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.”

“There should have been a dark whisper in the wind. Or maybe a deep chill in the bone. Something. An ethereal song only Elizabeth or I could hear. A tightness in the air. Some textbook premonition. There are misfortunes we almost expect in life—what happened to my parents, for example—and then there are other dark moments, moments of sudden violence that alter everything. There was my life before the tragedy. There is my life now. The two have very little in common.”

“An hour before his world exploded like a ripe tomato under a stiletto heel, Myron bit into a fresh pastry that tasted suspiciously like urinal cake.”

“The missing girl—there had been unceasing news reports, always flashing to that achingly ordinary school portrait of the vanished teen, you know the one, with the rainbow-swirl background, the girl's hair too straight, her smile too self-conscious, then a quick cut to the worried parents on the front lawn, microphones surrounding them, Mom silently tearful, Dad reading a statement with quivering lip—that girl, that missing girl had just walked past Edna Skylar.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He tried to read, but the words swam in front of his eyes in meaningless waves. He put on the television. Nick at Nite, the cultural equivalent of aerosol cheese.”

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

“This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.”

“There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy.”

“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.”