Top 300 Harlan Coben Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “He just said the base did boring agriculture stuff. Counting cows and crops, that’s how he put it.” “What’s the second thing?” “The closing of the base.” “Right, when was that?” “Fifteen years ago,” Kaufman says. “Three months after your brother and Augie’s daughter were found dead.”

— Harlan Coben

252. “There are two people in a tennis match. One ends up winning, one ends up losing. And I think the pleasure comes not from winning. I think the pleasure comes from beating someone.” She scrunched up her face like a very puzzled child. “Why is that something we admire? We call them winners, but when you think about it, they really get off on making someone else lose. Why is that something we admire so much?” “That’s.”

— Harlan Coben

253. “But if Frank had wanted Pavel dead, he would have had Aaron do it. Pavel had been murdered between midnight and one. Aaron was dead by midnight. Myron mulled this over a bit and decided that Aaron’s being dead made it extremely unlikely he was the killer.”

— Harlan Coben

254. “Life isn’t lived in the black and white, Wilde. People like to think so nowadays. All the online outrage, things are either all good or all bad. But life is lived in the gray. Life is lived in the nuances.”

— Harlan Coben

255. “Intuition was often a way of cutting corners, a nifty technique of replacing hard evidence and facts with something far more elusive and capricious. The worst investigators Carlson knew relied on so-called intuition.”

— Harlan Coben

256. “You grow immune to cruelty. It becomes the norm. You accept it. You move on.”

— Harlan Coben

257. “Ambition is natural when you don’t have anything. You know what you’re driving for.”

— Harlan Coben

258. “There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn’t live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon’s father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity – people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause – but there was nothing listed.”

— Harlan Coben

259. “Paige has to come to it on her own. Don’t you see that? I didn’t ‘let her go’” – Ingrid spat out the words – “because I don’t love her anymore. I let her go because she’s gone – and we can’t bring her back. Do you hear me? We can’t. Only she can.”

— Harlan Coben

260. “Win looked at him. “Were you ever in the military?” he asked. Pants seemed confused. “No.” “You are a worthless punk,” Win said in the same tone he might use when discussing a mixed stock report. “A pitiful ectoplasm such as yourself wearing army fatigues is an affront to any man or woman who has ever experienced real combat. If I ever happen across you again donning any similar garb, I will hurt you severely. Do I make myself clear?”

— Harlan Coben

261. “You hear about adrenaline, how it spurs you on and gives you uncanny strength, but there’s a flip side. The feeling is heady, out of control. It heightens your senses to the point of paralysis. You have to harness the power or it’ll choke you down.”

— Harlan Coben

262. “The other: “Oh my God, we were like so wasted.” “From beer?” “Beer and shots, yeah.” “How did you get home?” “Randy drove.” At the top of the stairs, Myron stiffened.”

— Harlan Coben

263. “But the irony would not hold. Schoolyards were not about innocence. There were bullies down there too and sociopaths-in-waiting and burgeoning psychoses and young minds filled prenatally with undiluted hate. Okay.”

— Harlan Coben

264. “A door behind the desk opened, and a short, wiry man entered. His short-sleeved dress shirt was shiny and unbuttoned down to the navel, revealing a host of gold chains and, uh, bling. His arms were knotted, ropy muscle. Have you ever seen someone who gave you the chills just by entering a room? This guy had that. Even the big bouncer, who had to be a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the short guy, took half a step back. A hush fell over us. The.”

— Harlan Coben

265. “I understand,” Myron said. “I hope you do, my friend.” Calvin looked up at the numbered lights. The lights flickered in his brown eyes. “Dreams never die. Sometimes you think they’re dead, but they’re just hibernating like some big old bear. And if the dream has been hibernating for a long time, that bear is going to wake up grumpy and hungry.” “You should write country songs,” Myron said. Calvin shook his head. “Just giving a friend fair warning.”

— Harlan Coben

266. “It’s important to like what you’re doing. Choosing a profession is the most important decision you’ll ever make – more important even than choosing a spouse.”

— Harlan Coben

267. “You look like several large orangutans made you their love slave.” Ah.”

— Harlan Coben

268. “You read me,” Myron said, “like Vasco da Gama reads a map.” Dimonte.”

— Harlan Coben

269. “That sensitivity workshop,” Myron said, “it’s really starting to pay off.”

— Harlan Coben

270. “What I mean is, everything is pretty much decided by the time these children leave here and enter kindergarten. I can tell who will be successful and who will fail, who will end up happy and who will end up in prison, and ninety percent of the time I’m right. Maybe Hollywood and video games have an influence, I don’t know.”

— Harlan Coben

271. “Semper paratus.” “It’s Latin,” Shane said. “It means ‘Always ready.”

— Harlan Coben

272. “Another male patron skulked around the back like he was in the adult movie area at his local video store. Again.”

— Harlan Coben

273. “Ma Parker.’ ‘Milton Berle.’ ‘Louie the Lilac.’ ‘Liberace.’ ‘Chandell the Great.’ ‘And?’ Win looked puzzled. ‘And what?’ ‘What other criminal did Liberace play?”

— Harlan Coben

274. “He had the bone-weary look of a survivor who wasn’t so sure the dead weren’t the lucky ones. He rambled back over toward Myron and unlocked the handcuffs. “Go,” he said. Myron.”

— Harlan Coben

275. “She circled in front of the woman, trying not to be too obvious, ducking behind taller people, and when she was in the right place, Edna spun around. The possible-Katie was walking toward her. Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, and Edna knew.”

— Harlan Coben

276. “They say that happens a lot with the elderly that – to paraphrase Springsteen – two hearts become one. When one dies, the other follows.”

— Harlan Coben

277. “The pretty blond girl said, “Good evening, Mr. Sutton!” They were both clean-cut and smiling and neatly dressed, and for some reason, a reason Harry couldn’t put his finger on – a reason that he’d soon learn was primitive and instinctive and absolutely correct – Harry felt more fear than he’d ever felt in his life.”

— Harlan Coben

278. “We started down the tunnel. I wondered how something like this had been built. No way it passed Kasselton code. Did Lizzy Sobek hire construction workers? I doubted it. Did volunteers work on it? Did those “chosen” by the Abeona Shelter build this tunnel? Maybe. Maybe my father helped build it. But.”

— Harlan Coben

279. “There is a fine line between a coffee break and a crack house.”

— Harlan Coben

280. “Okay, okay, no need for theatrics.” “No need,” Harry said with a bright smile, “but why not throw them in if I can?”

— Harlan Coben

281. “He had learned never to disturb her when the keyboard was clacking. He left a quick note and slipped out. He grabbed the 6 train up to midtown and walked to the Kinney lot on 46th Street. Mario tossed him the keys without glancing up from his paper.”

— Harlan Coben

282. “We talked about how most Americans used to be in the middle, relatively speaking. That’s how America kept its balance all those years. The left and the right were close enough to have disagreements but not hate.” “Okay.” “That world is gone, Gavin, and so it will now be easy to destroy the social order. The middle has become complacent. They are smart, but they are lazy. They see the grays. They get the other side. Extremists, on the other hand, see only black.”

— Harlan Coben

283. “He moved from shrub to shrub. Some of the shrubs were familiar from his last sojourn into these parts. He said hello to them, chatted, offered up his best cocktail-party banter. One shrub gave him a stock tip. Myron ignored it. He circled closer to the Coldren house, slowly, still careful not to be seen. He had no idea what he was going to do, but when he got close enough to see a light on in the den, an idea came to him. A.”

— Harlan Coben

284. “I refuse to offer hints.’ Myron ran episodes through his mind. On the court the umpire announced, ‘Time.’ The ninety-second commercial break was over. The players rose. Myron couldn’t swear to it, but he thought he saw Henry blink.”

— Harlan Coben

285. “Everything,” she said. Her mouth tightened. “Stewart Green was a psychopath. He stalked me. He beat me. He threatened to kill me.” “Why?” “What part of the word ‘psychopath’ confused you?”

— Harlan Coben

286. “The early morning flight to Boise was uneventful. We took off from LaGuardia, which could be a lousier airport but not without a serious act of God. I got my customary seat in economy class, the one behind a tiny old lady who insists on reclining her seat against my knees for the duration of the flight. Studying her gray follicles and pallid scalp – her head was practically in my lap – helped distract me. Squares.”

— Harlan Coben

287. “So what does she think?” Esperanza asked again. “About what?” “About the prospects for peace in the Middle East,” she snapped. “What do you think I mean? Your playing again.”

— Harlan Coben

288. “Extremists are relentless. They don’t see right or wrong – they see us and them.”

— Harlan Coben

289. “Every kid, Megan thought, is a frustrated lawyer, finding loopholes, demanding impossible levels of proof, attacking even the most minute of minutia.”

— Harlan Coben

290. “Myron shook his head. All sports have their own lexicons, but speaking golfese was tantamount to mastering Swahili. It was like rich people’s rap. But.”

— Harlan Coben

291. “Rumor had it TC was black though it was hard to see any trace of skin through the work of his tattoo artist. The obscure ink images blanketed almost all available somatic sites. Body piercing too appeared to be more of a lifestyle with TC than a hobby. The man looked like a nightmare version of Mr. Clean. Myron.”

— Harlan Coben

292. “Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

294. “After three rings the machine picked up. Win’s annoyingly superior accent said, “Hang up without leaving a message and die.” Beep. Myron shook his head, smiled, and, as always, left a message. He.”

— Harlan Coben

295. “Guys who always shined their shoes were usually self-involved asswipes who figure superficiality trumps substance.”

— Harlan Coben

296. “You live in that world. You’re one of them. They’d be more apt to talk to you.” Win shook his head. “They’ll never talk to me. Being ‘one of them,’ as you put it, is a severe handicap. Their guard will be up with someone like me. But with you they won’t be so concerned about facades. They’ll perceive you as someone who doesn’t matter, as someone inferior, as someone beneath them. A nobody.” “Gee, that’s flattering.” Win.”

— Harlan Coben

297. “Every relationship has fissures and cracks. That doesn’t mean it’s meaningless or bad or even wrong. We know that everything in our lives is complex and gray. Yet we somehow expect our relationships to never be anything but simple and pure.”

— Harlan Coben

298. “Politics and the press; two cherished institutions that spoke with tongues so forked they could double for fine dinnerware.”

— Harlan Coben

299. “Liberace only appeared in that one episode,’ Win announced. ‘Is that your final answer?’ ‘Yes. Liberace only appeared in that one episode.”

— Harlan Coben

300. “Just because you do right doesn’t mean that wrong won’t still find you.”

— Harlan Coben