Fool Me Once Quotes

“Doctors 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, Fool Me Once

“Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“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.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“They say you never know how someone will react when the grenade is thrown.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“War is never a meritocracy for the casualties.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“When you can see the stakes, when you realize the true purpose of your mission, it motivates you. It makes you focus. It makes you push away the distractions. You gain clarity of purpose. You gain strength.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Maya had one of those sudden “pow” moments sneak up on her, the ones all parents experience, when you are simply overwhelmed by your love for your child, when you are awestruck and you can feel something rising inside of you and you just want to hold onto it and yet, at the same time, that caring, that fear of losing this person, scares you into near paralysis. How, you wonder, will you ever relax again, knowing how unsafe the world is? Lily”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“But life changes people. It smothers that kind of larger-than-life woman. Time quiets them down. That firecracker girl you knew in high school—where is she now? It didn’t happen to men as much. Those boys often grew up to be masters of the universe. The super successful girls? They seemed to die of slow societal suffocation. So”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Death is so close, always, a breath away, so perhaps it was wise to introduce children to that concept at an early age. Maya”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“As a soldier, you don’t stand at attention because it looks nice. You stand at attention because, on some level, it either gives you strength or, just as important, makes you appear stronger to both your comrades and enemies.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“All around her, children and families played and laughed and reveled in the glory of this seemingly ordinary day. They did so without fear or care because they didn’t get it. They all played and they all laughed and they felt so damn safe. They didn’t see how fragile it all was.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Always better to be cautious. Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Semper paratus.” “It’s Latin,” Shane said. “It means ‘Always ready.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Relationships and marriages are hard enough, but you add war into the mix and small fissures become gaping wounds. No one sees what you’re seeing—again that clear-eyed, unbiased thing—except your fellow soldiers. It’s like one of those movies where only the hero can see the ghosts and everyone else thinks the hero is crazy. In”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Judith was a beautiful woman. She was petite with big round eyes and dainty, doll-like features. She looked younger than her years. There had been some work done—Botox, maybe a little something around the eyes—but it was tasteful, and most of her youthful appearance was due either to genetics or her daily yoga routine. Her figure still drew second glances. Men were drawn to her big-time—looks, brains, money—but if she dated, Maya didn’t know about it. “I”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“There was an awkwardness to him, a stoicism that most people, with their need for appearances and fake smiles, found off-putting. Shane couldn’t handle small talk or the excess bullshittery of modern society. When”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Most people oversimplify Occam’s razor to mean the simplest answer is usually correct. But the real meaning, what the Franciscan friar William of Ockham really wanted to emphasize, is that you shouldn’t complicate, that you shouldn’t “stack” a theory if a simpler explanation was at the ready. Pare it down. Prune the excess.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Maya never remembered her dreams, which could mean that she slept peacefully or that whatever happened in those dreams, her unconscious was merciful enough to let her forget them.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“When you eliminate the impossible what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Yes, but think about it: You either fall out of love, or, if you’re really one of the lucky ones, you live long enough to watch your soul mate die.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Maya had shaken her head and said, “God, Dad, that’s grim.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“All love stories,” Maya’s father had told her many years ago, “end in tragedy.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Death is so close, always, a breath away, so perhaps it was wise to introduce children to that concept at an early age.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“.” It was starting to click. “You convinced her to leak information to you?”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“That’s not what we were doing.” “I know, I know, collateral damage. Great nebulous term, don’t you think? Whatever you believe, accident or intentional, we the people should know. We may still want to fight the war. But we should know. Businessmen lie and cheat. Sports figures lie and cheat. Governments lie and cheat. We shrug. But imagine a world where that didn’t happen. Imagine a world where we have full accountability instead of unjust authority.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“People think I want to weaken governments or businesses. Actually I want the opposite. I want to strengthen them by forcing them to do the right thing, the just thing. If your government or business is built on lies, then build them on truth instead. So no secrets. No secrets anywhere. If a billionaire is paying off a government official to get that oil field, let the people know. In your case, if your government is killing civilians in a war—”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Maya stuck the nanny cam frame in the back of the car. She didn’t want it in the house anymore.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Lies never die. You can try to smother them, but lies will always find a way to show themselves again.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Burkett family was the moral and just thing to do. Didn’t matter in the end.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once