“closely—you can’t have a front without a back, you can’t have an up without a down, and I’m not sure you can have light without dark, purity without sleaze, good without evil.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“And if I can’t?” He held up the rope. There was a handle attached to the end. “Do you know what this is?” I did not reply. “It’s a Punjab lasso,” he said as if beginning a lecture. “The Thuggees used it. They were known as the silent assassins. From India. Some people think they were all wiped out in the nineteenth century. Others, well, others are not so sure.” He looked at Katy and held the primitive weapon up high. “Need I go on here, Will?” I shook my head. “He’ll know it’s a trap,” he said.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“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, quote from Gone for Good
“We are always “shocked” when we hear about violence in the suburbs, as though a well-watered lawn, a split-level construction, Little League and soccer moms, piano lessons, Four Squares courts, and parent-teacher conferences, all worked as some sort of wolfsbane, warding off evil. If the Ghost and McGuane grew up just nine miles from Livingston—again, that was how far the heart of Newark was—no one would be “stunned” and “dismayed” by what they’d become. I”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“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, quote from Gone for Good
“The shirts were buttoned low enough that their gray chest hair jutted out like steel wool.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“Even here, out in the supposed sticks, the strip malls dominated. There were all the customary mega-stores—the Chef Central, the Home Depot, the Old Navy—the country uniting in bloated monotony. The”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“Over the years, McGuane had learned that it was best to strike before you interrogate. Most people, when presented with the threat of pain, will try to talk their way out of it. That goes double for men who are accustomed to using their mouths. They’ll search for angles, for half-truths, for credible lies. They are rational, the assumption goes, and thus their opponents must be the same. Words can be used to defuse. You need to strip them of that delusion. The pain and fear that accompany a sudden physical assault are devastating to the psyche. Your cognitive reasoning—your intelligentsia, if you will, your evolved man—fades away, caves in. You are left with the Neanderthal, the primitive true-you who knows only to escape pain. The”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“I wanted to tell her that I loved her and appreciated her and wanted us, especially now that Mom was gone, to be closer, that I know Mom would have wanted that. But I couldn’t. I hugged her instead. Selma stiffened at first, startled by my aberrant display of affection, but then she relaxed. “It’ll be okay,” she told me. I”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“Sheila. Her betrayal pierced me deep, struck bone. To defend her now, to think I had been anything more to her than a dupe, would be to turn a blind eye in the worst way. You would have to be naïve beyond Pollyanna, to have rose-tinted glasses melded onto your face, to not be able to see the truth.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“Do you know anything about Darwin?” he asked. I thought the question was rhetorical, but he waited for an answer. I said, “Survival of the strongest, all that.” “Not the strongest,” he said. “That’s the modern interpretation, and it’s wrong. The key for Darwin was not that the strongest survive—the most adaptable do. See the difference?” I nodded.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“When we reached Pistillo’s office, I demanded to see him in my firmest voice. His secretary appeared unintimidated. She smiled with the genuineness of a politician’s wife and sweetly asked us to have a seat. Katy looked at me and shrugged. I would not sit. I paced like a caged lion, but I could feel my fury ebbing. Fifteen minutes later, the secretary told us that Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Pistillo—that was exactly how she said it, with the full title—would see us now. She opened the door. I blasted into the office. Pistillo”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
“She turned and stared at the young D.A. as though he were a bleeding boar and she was a panther with an industrial-sized case of piles.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Gone for Good
Harlan Coben
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
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“It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.”
― Paulo Freire, quote from Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”
― Chuck Klosterman, quote from Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
“Her voice was polished with a hint of a New England-boarding-school accent that shouted refinement over geographic locale. I was trying not to stare. She saw that and smiled a little. I don't want to sound like some kind of pervert because it wasn't like that. Femal beauty gets to me. I don't think I'm alone in that. It gets to me like a work of art gets to me. It gets to me like a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. It gets to me like night views of Paris or when the sun rises on the Grand Canyon or sets in the turquoise Arizona sky. My thoughts were not illicit. Ther were, I self-rationalized, rather artistic.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“Complexity implies meaning. We're afraid of meaning.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Relentless
“Are you decent?" a woman's voice called, pushing the door cautiously ajar.
"Nay, but we're clothed," Cian purred.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Spell of the Highlander
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