Top 300 Harlan Coben Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy. There.”

— Harlan Coben

302. “The Boomerangs’ motto was an obvious one: Karma is like a boomerang – whatever you give out will come back to you.”

— Harlan Coben

303. “There is a very fine line between relentless and stupid,” Win said. “Try to stay on the right side of it.”

— Harlan Coben

304. “Judith was a beautiful woman. She was petite with big round eyes and dainty, doll-like features. She looked younger than her years. There had been some work done – Botox, maybe a little something around the eyes – but it was tasteful, and most of her youthful appearance was due either to genetics or her daily yoga routine. Her figure still drew second glances. Men were drawn to her big-time – looks, brains, money – but if she dated, Maya didn’t know about it. “I.”

— Harlan Coben

305. “People – old, young, black, white, men, women – hung everywhere, spineless, flopped over like Dali clocks.”

— Harlan Coben

306. “Most people oversimplify Occam’s razor to mean the simplest answer is usually correct. But the real meaning, what the Franciscan friar William of Ockham really wanted to emphasize, is that you shouldn’t complicate, that you shouldn’t “stack” a theory if a simpler explanation was at the ready. Pare it down. Prune the excess.”

— Harlan Coben

307. “The danger of video games was that they shut the world out. The beauty of video games was that they shut the world out. Sally.”

— Harlan Coben

308. “Ironic, I guess. He was a humanitarian, my father. He survived going against the wishes of despots and dictators in some of the most dangerous and war-torn jungles in the world. He finally settled back in the relative safety of the United States and dies in a car crash driving me to a basketball game. It.”

— Harlan Coben

309. “There were some night paths the mind was better off not traversing;.”

— Harlan Coben

310. “I always assumed I’d find love like that. But now I don’t want it. It isn’t healthy. It makes you too dependent. You smile when they smile. You laugh when they laugh. But when they stop laughing, so do you. And when they die, a part of you dies too.”

— Harlan Coben

311. “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.”

— Harlan Coben

312. “Tyrell turned to me. “Come on. You gotta eat, right?” Hard to argue with that logic. We headed to Hobby’s Deli and sat in the corner. All three of us ordered triple-decker sandwiches the approximate size of a catcher’s mitt. It was the best sandwich I had ever eaten. On a scale of one to ten, if this was a ten, the next best sandwich I’d had was a three. “Cops.”

— Harlan Coben

313. “There are some places the mind should not go; it gets steered there anyway.”

— Harlan Coben

314. “According to the chalkboard, tonight was “Ladies Night” featuring “Dollar Drafts for Chicks,” a marketing ploy that drew in, it appeared, a certain female clientele. For example, one straw-haired woman, who was cackle-laughing in a “notice me” manner, wore a yellow T-shirt that read “Sloppy Seconds,” which, alas, seemed all too apropos. Megan.”

— Harlan Coben

315. “The key to making time slow down is to have new experiences.”

— Harlan Coben

316. “When I got off the phone with Rachel, I called Ema and filled her in on the plan. I wanted to get an update on Spoon, but, one, I didn’t know who to call, and, two, I didn’t want to be distracted. Spoon had made it clear: There was nothing I could do for him. I had to concentrate on finding the truth. I.”

— Harlan Coben

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

— Harlan Coben

318. “Secrets don’t like to stay underground.”

— Harlan Coben

319. “Someone once told Hester that memories hurt, the good ones most of all. As she got older, Hester realized just how true that was.”

— Harlan Coben

320. “If I have to cheer for you to know I’m proud,” Dad once told Myron, “then I’m doing something wrong.” Never.”

— Harlan Coben

321. “They say possesions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.”

— Harlan Coben

322. “Tragedy sort of works this way: Once it snakes its way in, it cuts down all your defenses and allows its brethren easy access to feed.”

— Harlan Coben

323. “Worn tires and ripped mattresses lay like war wounded in the middle of the road. Big chunks of cement peeked out from the high grass. There were stripped cars and while there were no fires burning, maybe there should have been.”

— Harlan Coben

324. “Everyone looks happy,” he’d said to Corinne. “Oh, not you too.” “What?” “Everyone looks happy on Facebook,” Corinne said. “It’s like a compilation of your life’s greatest hits.”

— Harlan Coben

325. “For the first eighteen years of my life, I have zero memories that aren’t entangled in you. We shared a womb; then we shared a room. There was, in fact, nothing we did not share. I told you everything. Everything. There is nothing I kept from you. There is nothing I was embarrassed or ashamed to tell you because I knew you’d still love me. For everyone else, there is a bit of a facade. There has to be. But with you and me, there was none. I.”

— Harlan Coben

326. “He didn’t believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.”

— Harlan Coben

327. “Two minutes later, we were ushered into Mr. Flannery’s inner sanctum. The office smelled of cigar smoke and Lemon Pledge. Snap-together furniture, the kind you might find at Kmart or Bradlees, had been stained dark, feigning rich oak and mahogany and working about as well as a Las Vegas toupee.”

— Harlan Coben

328. “I thought about that, about this town, about what it has done to him. Spoon wasn’t so much actively bullied or picked on as he was ignored. Week after week, month after month, year after year – ignored or worse. He had found an escape by pouring himself into things that don’t turn away from you – musical theater, books, random facts, his imagination. He was like a sponge, absorbing all of this information and goodness, but he didn’t really have anyone to wring himself out on, as it were. Except.”

— Harlan Coben

329. “They take in the full experience of great loves and great tragedies without backing down or crouching into some sort of defensive stance. If life is going to punch them in the face, they stick their chins out and savor the moment. That is living life to the fullest.”

— Harlan Coben

330. “We have this sense of continuity and nostalgia in America, but in truth, every generation runs away from the one before it. Oddly enough, most of the time, they run to someplace better.”

— Harlan Coben

331. “We stayed a step behind the three boys. Every once in a while they would turn around and look at us, wondering, I guess, why we were following them. Sometimes they stared openly at Ema. There may have been derision in their eyes, I couldn’t say for sure. Ema was decked out in her customary black – black clothes, black hair, black nail polish, black lipstick. Tattoos ran up and down her arms and across her neck. I.”

— Harlan Coben