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" 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
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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. "
Harlan Coben
Good
Blessings
Living
" 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
" Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else. "
Harlan Coben
Boring
Busy
Writing
" 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
Sitting
You
Fire
" 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
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Happy
Back
You
" 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
" I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, I love to fool you a third time. And just when you think it's all over, I have what I call that Carrie hand-out-of-the-grave moment. Just when you think it's all over, I'm going to hit you with just one more. I can't help myself. "
Harlan Coben
Fool
Myself
Moment
" Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing. "
Harlan Coben
Creating
Up
Only
" 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'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
" 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'm thinking of taking up golf, but the idea of spending time with golfers frightens me. "
Harlan Coben
Spending Time
Thinking
Time
" 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
" There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation. "
Harlan Coben
Desperation
Person
Inspiration
" If I'm not writing well, I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family, I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme. "
Harlan Coben
Writing
Family
Happy
" 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
" 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
" In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart. "
Harlan Coben
Process
Heart
Short
" The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me. "
Harlan Coben
Me
Marathon
Father
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
American
Life
Book
" My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write. "
Harlan Coben
Go
House
Know
" I'm a little bit of a control freak. "
Harlan Coben
Control
Little
Freak
" I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction. "
Harlan Coben
Lewis
Crime Fiction
Fiction
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Find
Never
Going
" 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 real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. "
Harlan Coben
Real
Life
Real Life
" 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
" 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. "
Harlan Coben
Baseball
Good And Evil
Good
" I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness. "
Harlan Coben
Happiness
Try
Children