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" I'm not very happy idle. "
Harlan Coben
Very
Happy
Idle
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" 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. "
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Like
Write
Skills
" I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction. "
Harlan Coben
Lewis
Crime Fiction
Fiction
" I once worked as a tour guide in the Costa del Sol of Spain. "
Harlan Coben
Tour
Worked
Guide
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Boat
You
Together
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Fear
Work
Self
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Work
Know
Happy
" A writer without a reader doesn't exist. "
Harlan Coben
Exist
Writer
Without
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Vacation
Me
Growing Up
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
You
Life
Good
" I don't necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It's caring about something that's utterly meaningless. "
Harlan Coben
Way
Care
Caring
" Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties. "
Harlan Coben
Pen
Mother
Early
" I remember the days of sitting at book signings, playing with my pen when no one would come, and still I even then thought I was living the dream, because I had a book out. "
Harlan Coben
Remember
Pen
Book
" I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring. "
Harlan Coben
Memoir
Never
Write
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Preparation
Best
Character
" Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell. "
Harlan Coben
Heart
Hope
World
" Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else. "
Harlan Coben
Boring
Busy
Writing
" I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am. "
Harlan Coben
People
Love
I Am
" I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that. "
Harlan Coben
Love
Hope
I Am
" I'm a little bit of a control freak. "
Harlan Coben
Control
Little
Freak
" I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness. "
Harlan Coben
Happiness
Try
Children
" I'm not a big sports fan. "
Harlan Coben
Sports Fan
Sports
Fan
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Good
Blessings
Living
" Writing is one of the few activities where quantity will inevitably make quality. The more you write, the better you're going to get at it. "
Harlan Coben
Quality
Better
You
" Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white. "
Harlan Coben
Good
Think
Know
" A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made. "
Harlan Coben
Taste
You
See
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Always
Realize
Truth
" Writing isn't about the process. It is about creating. The joy comes not from the process but from the creation. "
Harlan Coben
Writing
Process
Joy
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Writing
You
Me
" I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do. "
Harlan Coben
Find
Think
You
" In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart. "
Harlan Coben
Process
Heart
Short