Think Twice (Myron Bolitar, #12)

by Harlan Coben

We are our mistakes. Sometimes they are the best part of us.

Your life is one thing before you have a child. It is forever something else after. Nothing is the same.

We like to think the universe is just or orderly, but we all know that it is not. It is cruel and random. We think that we have evolved as a species, that it is the survival of the fittest, but in fact, the best of us, the strongest of us, the most intelligent and brave, were sent to battle centuries ago and died no matter how, like Myron, brave and skilled they were, while the feeble and cowardly stayed home and reproduced. That’s who we are. The byproduct of the feeble and weak. The fecal wreckage, if you will, of history. We want to believe that there is an ethical center to our being, that our world is peaceful and kind, and yet anyone who has seen even five minutes of a wildlife documentary is reminded that we must kill to survive. All of us. That’s the world whatever higher being you believe in created—a world of kill or die.