01c. 1990 AD..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
02c. 1990 ADI wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
03c. 1990 ADIt's not the dead even. They're gone. Nothing you can do about that. It's what's left behind - the echo. These woods you're walking through. There are some old timers who think a sound echoes here forever. Makes sense when you think about it. That Billingham kid. I'm sure he screamed. He screams, it echoes, just bounces back and forth, the sound getting smaller and smaller, but never entirely disappearing. Like a part of his is still calling out, even now.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
04c. 1990 ADThere are various theories about why the years seem to pass faster as you get older. The most popular is also the most obvious. As you get older, each year is a smaller percentage of your life. If you are ten years old, a year is ten percent. If you are fifty years old, a year is two percent. But she read a theory that spurned that explanation. The theory states that time passes faster when we are in a set routine, when we aren't learning anything new, when we stay stuck in a life pattern. They key to making time slow down is to have new experiences. You may joke that the week you went on vacation flew by far too quickly, but if you stop and think about it, that week actually seemed to last much longer than one involving the drudgery of your day job. You are complaining about it going away so fast because you loved it, not because it felt as though time was passing faster. If you want to slow down time, this theory holds: If you want to make the days last, do something different. Travel to exotic locales. Take a class.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
05c. 1990 ADA dancer on break approached him. She smiled. Each tooth was angled in a different direction, as if her mouth were the masterwork of a mad orthodontist. "Hi," she said. "Hi." "You're really cute." "I don't have any money."She spun and walked away. Ah, romance.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
06c. 1990 ADGetting into a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a school teacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers." She slapped my back. "Welcome to high school.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
07c. 1990 ADIn 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 / quote ↗
09c. 1990 ADThere are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
10c. 1990 ADI blinked and the images were gone. But I remembered how the laugh and the howl and the splash would ripple and echo in the stillness of our lake, and I wondered if ripples and echoes like those ever fully die away, if somewhere in the woods my father's joyful yelps still bounced quietly off the trees. Silly thought, but there you go.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
11c. 1990 ADDoctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. 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. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
12c. 1990 ADDreams never die. Sometimes you think they are dead, but they are just hibernating lie some old bear. And, if the dream has been hibernating for a long time, that bear is going to wake up grumpy and hungryHarlan Coben / quote ↗
13c. 1990 ADMuse usually gestured like an amphetamine-fueled Sicilian who's nearly gotten clipped by a speeding car.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
14c. 1990 ADIt was one lesson he never forgot.You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted.And you don't act like the goverment with their "proportional responses" and all that nonsense.If someone hurts you,mercy and pity must be put aside,You eliminate the enemy.You scorch the earth.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
15c. 1990 ADYou 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 ↗
17c. 1990 ADA friend once told Megan that we are always seventeen years old, waiting for our lives to begin. More than ever, clutching to this man, Megan understood that.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
18c. 1990 ADViolence doesn't solve anything. Win would make a face when I said that, but the truth was, whenever I resorted to violence, it never just ended there. Violence ripples and reverberates. It echoes and really never seems to go silent.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
19c. 1990 ADShe wore a killer smile, absolutely devastating. It was a smile that could twist a man’s heart. A man could fall in love just being on the receiving end of that smile. A man would want to see the smile every day and be the one who could make it appear. He would want it all to himself.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
21c. 1990 ADThe gray has no chance against that smile. It vanishes in a wonderful haze of bright color.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
23c. 1990 ADSecrets...were cancers. Secrets festered. Secrets ate away at your innards, leaving behind nothing but a flimsy husk.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
24c. 1990 ADSome people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.Harlan Coben / quote ↗
