“Summer romances cometo an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships.You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer from a waitress who looked as though she wanted to be in one of those want-to-get-away? commercials. She called me hon. I love when a waitress calls me hon.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“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
“A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all.
You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“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, quote from The Woods
“We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it.
Maybe we all survive the destruction we have wrought.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“Muse usually gestured like an amphetamine-fueled Sicilian who's nearly gotten clipped by a speeding car.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
“You don't worry about happiness and fulfillment when you're starving.
It is good to remember that.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from The Woods
Harlan Coben
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
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“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from What Do You Care What Other People Think?
“Very well. Now, if you stimulate those damaged places in your brain again, you run the risk of opening up the old wounds. I mean, that if you get nerve-sensations of any kind producing the reactions which we call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility, they may go on to make disturbance right along the old channel, and produce in their turn physical changes which you will call by the names you were accustomed to associate with them—dread of German mines, responsibility for the lives of your men, strained attention and the inability to distinguish small sounds through the overpowering noise of guns.” “I”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, quote from Whose Body?
“I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.”
― Donald Barthelme, quote from Sixty Stories
“If the feet of enlightenment moved, the great ocean would overflow; If that head bowed, it would look down upon the heavens.
Such a body has no place to rest. . . .
Let another continue this poem.”
― quote from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings
“You should appreciate those things while you have them, but you never do. Not all the way. Too busy living. Now and again, you should try to stop to appreciate the little things. They'll build up if you do.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Sea Swept
Our Mutual Friend
Ptolemy's Gate
So Long, and Thanks...
Reckless
Tales of the City
ExistenceBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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