Top 300 Harlan Coben Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 7

151. “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

152. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

154. “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

155. “I would rather raise certain topics and maybe let you ruminate on them. I’m not big on answering them.”

— Harlan Coben

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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.”

— Harlan Coben

159. “This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.”

— Harlan Coben

160. “With choice comes guilt. No escaping it.”

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

— Harlan Coben

163. “People had long memories. No matter how many years passed, he would always be the subject of whispers and innuendos.”

— Harlan Coben

164. “The pain flooded in again. It was always there, of course. Through the shaking hands and slapping of the backs, the grief stayed by his side, tapping Griffin on the shoulder, whispering in his ear, reminding him that they were partners for life.”

— Harlan Coben

165. “The eyebrows were his most prominent feature – unusually thick and angry and constantly undulating.”

— Harlan Coben

166. “The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea – wink, wink.”

— Harlan Coben

167. “We humans can’t see straight. We are always biased. We always protect our own interests.”

— Harlan Coben

168. “And bad stays. Bad doesn’t go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

171. “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

172. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

174. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

177. “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

178. “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

179. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

181. “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

182. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

187. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

189. “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

190. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

192. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

194. “They think my male helplessness is cute. When a single mother does any of those things, she is neglectful and on the receiving end of the superior moms’ scorn.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

197. “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

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

— Harlan Coben

199. “Myron remembered something his father once told him: People have an amazing capacity to mess up their own lives.”

— Harlan Coben

200. “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