Harlan Cotterie Quotes

My girl has got a bun in her oven, and I guess you know who did the damn cooking. ~ Stephen King

The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. ~ John Marshall Harlan

It is not realistic, maybe ... but art doesn't have to be realistic. Romeo and Juliet is not realistic, but it is true ... it shows the essence of falling in love. ~ Jan Harlan

The cardinal rule: You never have to take back words you don't say. ~ Harlan Coben

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

Perhaps it had something to do with the case becoming too neat, all the evidence suddenly lining up and cooperating with their theory. Or maybe his doubts were based on something as unreliable as "intuition," though Carlson had never been a big fan of that particular aspect of investigative work. 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. He ~ Harlan Coben

Take a break from dating. This can be for as long as you need. But give yourself time to heal. I like to use the Wite-Out example. Unless you allow the Wite-Out to dry on the paper, writing over it will just cause a smudge and uncover what is still underneath. Wait until you heal before getting back out there. ~ Harlan Cohen

As we got closer to Notre Dame, I said, "Would you be embarrassed if I rounded my shoulders, dragged my left leg, and shouted, 'Sanctuary! ~ Harlan Coben

It was also lazy parenting, he thought. Teach them to do the right thing because it's the right thing - not because Mom and Dad are looking over your shoulder. ~ Harlan Coben

Then he said the truest thing about their relationship. He said, We didn't really fall in love. What we did was collide at the intersection of your life and mine. ~ Harlan Ellison

The simplest answer is usually correct. ~ Harlan Coben

At core, no matter how kindly may be your thoughts of the human race, there are times when all you want to do is crumple it up and either set fire to it, or use it to pad the floor of a bird cage.
Big bird cage.
Really big bird. ~ Harlan Ellison

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

She looks really happy."
"Everyone looks happy on Facebook."
"I know, right? What's up with that? ~ Harlan Coben

His world was wobbly but back on the axis. ~ Harlan Coben

I read Parker's Spenser series in college. When it comes to detective novels, 90 percent of us admit he's an influence, and the rest of us lie about it. ~ Harlan Coben

He didn't like violence, no matter what he'd told Jessica before. He was good at it, no denying that, but he did not like it. Yes, violence was the closest modern man came to his true primitive self, the closest he came to the intended state of nature, to the Lockean ideal, if you will. And yes, violence was the ultimate test of man, a test of both physical strength and animalistic cunning. But it was still sickening. Man had - in theory anyway - evolved for a reason. In the final analysis, violence was indeed a rush. But so was skydiving without a parachute. ~ Harlan Coben

When you hit thirty-five or forty, you know on one level that you are no longer the physical specimen you once were. ~ Harlan Coben

You can't have an up without a down, a left without a right - and you can't have good times without expecting bad. ~ Harlan Coben

The girl cupped her hands over her eyes and blinked. She was pretty enough, with blonde highlights that you can only find in youth or a bottle. "Hi." Loren ~ Harlan Coben

YOU don't know her secret," Win said to me. "Should I?" Win shrugged. "It's bad?" I asked. "Very," Win said. "Then maybe I don't want to know." Two days before I learned the secret she'd kept buried for a decade - the seemingly personal secret that would not only devastate the two of us but change the world forever - Terese Collins called me at five AM, pushing me from one quasi-erotic dream into another. She simply said, "Come to Paris." I had not heard her voice in, what, seven years maybe, and the line had static and she didn't bother with hello or any preamble. I stirred and said, "Terese? Where are you?" "In a cozy hotel on the Left Bank called d'Aubusson. You'll love it here. There's an Air France flight leaving tonight at seven." I ~ Harlan Coben

In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "Our defense will be...?" He looked to Matt for the answer/
"Blame the other guy," Matt said.
"Which other guy?"
"Yes."
"Huh?"
"We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO, the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter-Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled."
"Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded.
"We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury end up knowing something went wrong but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed t and dotted i. We act like discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We are skeptical of EVERYONE. ~ Harlan Coben

Years ago, Myron had found this all somewhat poignant and oddly comforting - the war relic now housing artists - but the world was different now. In the eighties and nineties, it had all been cute and quaint. Now this "progress" felt like phony symbolism. Near ~ Harlan Coben

I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness. ~ Harlan Coben

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row, and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal, and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is, it makes the series limited, you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis. ~ Harlan Coben

Confusion helps. Confusion leads to lengthy reconstruction and clarification and exposition and several other "ions. ~ Harlan Coben

Route 95 in Connecticut and New York is basically a series of construction areas masquerading as an interstate highway. ~ Harlan Coben

I'm not a fan of self-help books - how can something be 'self-help' if the book itself is purportedly helping you? ~ Harlan Coben

Regrets and could-have-beens tried to sneak in, but he shoved them away. No time for this now. ~ Harlan Coben

Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return. ~ Harlan Coben

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

Some strip joints called themselves "gentlemen's clubs," and businessmen wore suits and acted above the riffraff. There was no such pretense at the Eager Beaver. This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth. People fought. The bouncers had bigger guts than muscle because muscle was show and these guys would seriously kick your ass. Olivia ~ Harlan Coben

No, I don't live in heartache. I don't cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And - like it or not - I still think about her every single day. ~ Harlan Coben

But, alas, that was crap. She'd been had by a con man - simple as that. His modesty had been a way to cover up his true self. Call it instinct or women's intuition or going with your gut - whenever Wendy had done that, she had been wrong. "I ~ Harlan Coben

When you're all alone out there, on the end of the typewriter, with each new story a new appraisal by the world of whether you can still get it up or not, arrogance and self-esteem and deep breathing are all you have. It often looks like egomania. I assure you it's the bold coverup of the absolutely terrified. ~ Harlan Ellison

I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company. ~ Harlan Coben

Megan looked into Agnes's frightened face. Agnes had been so sharp just a few years back - funny and cutting and wonderfully ribald. ~ Harlan Coben

Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else. ~ Harlan Coben

Ten-A-Fly took off his sunglasses as if they'd angered him. His scowl aimed for intimidation but seemed more in the neighborhood of constipation. "So ~ Harlan Coben