Harlan Coben Quotes

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

And I definitely gravitate toward people who use laughter to pull themselves out of the abyss.

Art gives us the opportunity to have clarity as well as hope that we might be able to survive a situation, or hope that we can find a way out of it without too much more injury to ourselves.

As soon as I go into a dark subject, like discussing the people I've loved and lost, I off-road into absurdist comedy perversion. It's both a means of protection and a kind of denial, a blessing and a curse. Wait, it's not a blessing at all. I guess it would be a bad habit and a curse.

I'm not a victim.

I take my forgetfulness in a positive stride because I also forget the problems.

I always want to find meaning in stuff that sucks - I don't want it to be the end of the sentence.

I had kind of a rough childhood, so I created my own reality.

Even with the most horrendous things that happen and the tremendous pain that people have to deal with, they still laugh, because I think that's what it means to be human.

I don't think you're human unless you go through some [self-destructi on].

There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might pant on to be a hundred.

Reader, do you think it is a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since,in the end, it really makes no difference to anyone but you?

When something bad happens to me, I think I'm able to deal with it in a pretty good way. That makes me lucky. Some people fall apart at the first little thing that happens.

sometimes the best thing to do is to pretend it didn't happen

Humor is hope's companion in arms. It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.

Sometimes the tide is just out. But it always comes back in again. In times of severe distress, we tend to get tunnel vision and think this feeling will last forever. It will not.

Whatever it is probably won't go away, so we might as well live and laugh through it. When we double over laughing, we're bending so we won't break. If you think your particular troubles are too heavy and too traumatic to laugh about, remember that laughing is like changing a baby's diaper. It doesn't solve any problems permanently, but it makes things more acceptable for awhile.

There are some things, I think, you're btter off not remembering.

Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk--or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.

Most people think that 'I don't recall' is a clever answer. But it isn't that clever. You might not recall that you had bacon and eggs for breakfast- but if you killed your mother, you'll remember it.

I think the one thing that I cannot do without each day is hope. If you put me in a position where you took all my hope away, I'm not sure I could make it through the day.

but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works. But it’s sadly temporary in its effects.

Am I like the optimist who, while falling ten stories from a building, says at each story, I'm all right so far?

I think there is one smashing rule: never face the facts.