Harlan Coben Quotes

Author Image

Harlan Coben

Profession : Author

Birth : January 4, 1962

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

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

Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict, but it's a hell of a teacher.

Harlan Coben

Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.

Harlan Coben

More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key.

Harlan Coben

Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed.

Harlan Coben

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.

Harlan Coben

I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company.

Harlan Coben

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

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

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

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

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

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

'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.

Harlan Coben

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

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.

Harlan Coben

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Harlan Coben

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.

Harlan Coben

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