Harlan Coben Quotes - 9quotes.com

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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1.
Written by Harlan Coben
I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.
Written by Harlan Coben
I never bought the excuse of not having time to write. If you really want to do it, you're either going to find those hours or eventually decide not to be a writer.
Written by Harlan Coben
Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
Written by Harlan Coben
I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.'
Written by Harlan Coben
I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.
Written by Harlan Coben
I'm a little bit of a control freak.
Written by Harlan Coben
The most annoying and full-of-crap thing a writer says is, 'I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it.' A writer without a reader doesn't exist.
Written by Harlan Coben
I'm 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition, but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin.
Written by Harlan Coben
Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed.
Written by Harlan Coben
I am, after all, a thriller writer. I routinely delve into the darkest chambers of the human heart. I've written about murder, kidnapping, depravity, horror, violence, and disfigurement.
Written by Harlan Coben
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
Written by Harlan Coben
Children learn much more from how you act than from what you tell them. There are times this worries me - we parents are rarely the role models we want to be. True for life. True for driving.
Written by Harlan Coben
You can't have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front - or a happy without a sad.
Written by Harlan Coben
This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.
Written by Harlan Coben
Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.
Written by Harlan Coben
More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key.
Written by Harlan Coben
In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
Written by Harlan Coben
Life may not always fall into neat chapters, and you may not always get the satisfying ending you're looking for, but sometimes a good explanation is all the rewrite you need.
Written by Harlan Coben
I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair.
Written by Harlan Coben
You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'
Written by Harlan Coben
And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often - very last paragraph sometimes - I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different.
Written by Harlan Coben
'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won't work.
Written by 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?
Written by Harlan Coben
I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.
Written by Harlan Coben
If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills. Clearly I'm not meant to do anything else.
Written by Harlan Coben
The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink.
Written by Harlan Coben
There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
Written by Harlan Coben
Writing isn't about the process. It is about creating. The joy comes not from the process but from the creation.
Written by Harlan Coben
Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.
Written by Harlan Coben

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