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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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 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
" 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 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
" No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer. "
Harlan Coben
Reading
Black And White
Experience
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Like
Coffee
Go
" Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict, but it's a hell of a teacher. "
Harlan Coben
Strict
Tragedy
Much
" In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. "
Harlan Coben
Real
Life
Real Life
" I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring. "
Harlan Coben
Memoir
Never
Write
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Life
Romantic
Work
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Back
Life
Me
" That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight. "
Harlan Coben
Crime
Your
You
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Book
Crime
Change
" I'm not a big sports fan. "
Harlan Coben
Sports Fan
Sports
Fan
" I'm thinking of taking up golf, but the idea of spending time with golfers frightens me. "
Harlan Coben
Spending Time
Thinking
Time
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Driving
Children
Parents
" 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
" I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good. "
Harlan Coben
Insecurity
Go
Always
" In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart. "
Harlan Coben
Process
Heart
Short
" A writer without a reader doesn't exist. "
Harlan Coben
Exist
Writer
Without
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
October
Thinking
Book
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Write
Care
Most
" I'm not very happy idle. "
Harlan Coben
Very
Happy
Idle
" Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely. "
Harlan Coben
Life
Parents
Losing
" I'm not a fan of self-help books - how can something be 'self-help' if the book itself is purportedly helping you? "
Harlan Coben
Something
Books
Book
" Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell. "
Harlan Coben
Heart
Hope
World
" The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to. "
Harlan Coben
Vacation
Hotel
Live
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Like
Write
Skills
" Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed. "
Harlan Coben
Make
Mistake
Out
" 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