Harlan Coben Quotes
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I don't find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it's a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together.
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I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row, and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal, and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is, it makes the series limited, you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.
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The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
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Writing isn't about the process. It is about creating. The joy comes not from the process but from the creation.
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I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
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What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister; I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.
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I love stories. When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.
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I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.
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I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company.
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More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key.
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There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
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In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.
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When you like something and you're pretty good at it and you can make a living doing it, you don't ask why. You just count your blessings and go with it.
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I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
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If I don't write, I hate myself. Simple as that. My life is out of balance.
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'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.
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I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.
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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.
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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.
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The muse is not an angelic voice that sits on your shoulder and sings sweetly. The muse is the most annoying whine. The muse isn't hard to find, just hard to like - she follows you everywhere, tapping you on the shoulder, demanding that you stop doing whatever else you might be doing and pay attention to her.
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A writer without a reader doesn't exist.
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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.
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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.
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When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.