Top 300 Harlan Coben Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “When he finished telling her about the kidnapping, Esperanza’s first words were an incredulous, “Win has a mother?” “Yep.” Pause. “There goes my spawned-from-a-satanic-egg theory.”

— Harlan Coben

152. “They’re politicians,’ Win said. ‘They’d lie and evade if you asked them what they had for breakfast.”

— Harlan Coben

153. “I’m also inspired by anything that I consider great. It makes me want to raise my game too – Hitchcock movies, Hopper paintings, Springsteen concerts.”

— Harlan Coben

154. “When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing – it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

156. “There is silence, and then there is rural silence, silence you could feel and reach out and touch, silence with texture and distance.”

— Harlan Coben

157. “Children view their parents as both intrepid and omnipotent – yet here their parents are, gazing up at me, the doctor, with a fear-filled longing normally reserved for religious rapture. What.”

— Harlan Coben

158. “Yvonne started humming the QuickGo jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find.”

— Harlan Coben

159. “I remember everything about her. The way she looked. The way she smelled. The way she’d come home from her job so tired she could barely put her feet up. I don’t think I’ve talked about her five times in the past twenty years. But I think about her every day. I think about why she gave me up. And I think about why I still miss her.”

— Harlan Coben

160. “At one time, this might have been a nice area, but now the neighborhood looked like a man who’d lost his job and stopped bathing.”

— Harlan Coben

161. “The young family who’d moved into the Miller home had gotten rid of the Millers’ trademark overflowing flower boxes. The new owners of the Davis place had ripped out those wonderful shrubs Bob Davis had worked on every weekend. It all reminded Myron of an invading army ripping down the flags of the conquered.”

— Harlan Coben

162. “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, your 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.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

164. “I kept glancing at her animated face, scrunched up as though imitating an adult. I got hit with that overwhelming feeling. It sneaked up on me. Parents get it from time to time. You are looking at your child and it is an ordinary moment, not like they are onstage or hitting a winning shop, just sitting there, and you look at them and you know that they are your whole life and that moves you and scares you and makes you want to stop time.”

— Harlan Coben

165. “I turned to Otto. “Why the hell did you hit him like that?” Otto looked back at me with eyes that sent a chill straight through my heart. They were lifeless eyes, not the slightest hint of light behind them. It was as though I were looking into the eyes of an inanimate object – the eyes of an end table, maybe, or a cardboard box. From.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

168. “Two people, a man and your ex, Maura, are in the car,” Reynolds says. “Officer Canton pulls them over for a DUI. Something spooks them. They panic, shoot Officer Canton twice in the back of the head, take off.”

— Harlan Coben

169. “Don’t go playing hero,” he said. “Just find out if he’s there. Something gets out of hand, you get out of there pronto.” “Okay.” “And we should have a code word. Something you say if you need me.” Esperanza nodded, feigning seriousness. “If I say the words premature ejaculation, it means I want you to come.”

— Harlan Coben

170. “Some people are drawn to trouble. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.”

— Harlan Coben

171. “The world doesn’t give even the slightest damn about us or our petty problems.”

— Harlan Coben

172. “His voice not only dripped sarcasm but seemed to have spent days marinated in it: “How noble.” “Objection!”

— Harlan Coben

173. “The boys wore helmets that looked too big on their heads, like the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones, and it was nearly impossible to tell which kid was which.”

— Harlan Coben

174. “A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

176. “Obsession does not seek out problems and correct them; it manufactures them out of nothing, feeds them, makes them stronger.”

— Harlan Coben

177. “Purging was part of his grieving process –.”

— Harlan Coben

178. “But see, feminism isn’t about helping a fellow sister. It’s about an equal playing field. It’s about giving women choices, not guarantees.” Tia.”

— Harlan Coben

179. “Feeding teenage boys was like filling a bathtub with a grapefruit spoon.”

— Harlan Coben

180. “Diamonte shook his head again. He reached down and put his hand on his right boot. Myron had seen him do this before. He liked to sort of pet the boot. Myron had no idea why. Maybe he found the feel of snakeskin soothing. Reminiscent of the womb.”

— Harlan Coben

181. “I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.”

— Harlan Coben

182. “When Myron was ten years old, his father had taken him and his younger brother, Brad, to a game. Brad was five at the time. Dad had secured.”

— Harlan Coben

183. “The old saw about bad news traveling fast has never been truer than in the age of the Internet.”

— Harlan Coben

184. “I’m sorry,” my dead wife mouthed.”

— Harlan Coben

185. “Well now everything dies, baby that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back. – Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City.”

— Harlan Coben

186. “The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling – that you’d take on vacation and rather than going out, you’d read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that’s what readers are responding to.”

— Harlan Coben

187. “I’d rather read than relax. I’d rather keep the mind engaged.”

— Harlan Coben

188. “Check out the comments underneath,” Augie says. I move the cursor down. “There are over fifty thousand of them.” “Just click ‘Top Comments’ and read a few.” I do as he asks. And as always when reading a comments section, my faith in humanity plummets:.”

— Harlan Coben

189. “The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don’t do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it’s due October 1.”

— Harlan Coben

190. “He passed a hair salon called Snip Away, which sounded more like a vasectomy clinic than a beauty parlor.”

— Harlan Coben

191. “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.”

— Harlan Coben

192. “Hope she’s not getting Gloria.” “Why?” “She kinda looks like a white version of me,” Jake said. “Only with a heavier beard.”

— Harlan Coben

193. “When you can see the stakes, when you realize the true purpose of your mission, it motivates you. It makes you focus. It makes you push away the distractions. You gain clarity of purpose. You gain strength.”

— Harlan Coben

194. “Another pause. Cameras pirouetted. Myron looked around. All the lenses were aiming down from up high, glaring at him like hostile space aliens or lunchroom monitors.”

— Harlan Coben

195. “He sounded genuine, but Myron knew that meant nothing. People were amazing liars.”

— Harlan Coben

196. “The decor was nice in a fake-rustic, Martha Stewart sort of way. The furniture was what they called “simple country” where the look was indeed simple and the price outrageous. Lots of pines and wickers and antiques and dry flowers. The smell of potpourri was strong and cloying. They.”

— Harlan Coben

197. “One time Clu tried to explain it to me,” Enos continued. “‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to escape the world; sometimes you want to escape yourself.’ ” He cocked his head. “Do you believe that?” “Not really,” Myron said. “Like a lot of cute phrases, it sounds good. But it also sounds like a load of self-rationalization.”

— Harlan Coben

198. “War is never a meritocracy for the casualties.”

— Harlan Coben

199. “This is how detecting works. You keep going even if what you’re doing seems like a momentous waste of time and energy.”

— Harlan Coben

200. “They watched a repeat of Frasier on Channel 11. The show was starting to grow on them both.”

— Harlan Coben