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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

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Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Blessing
Pretty
Asks
Living
Something
Make
Good
Blessings
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More quotes by Harlan Coben

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The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.
Harlan Coben
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I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.
Harlan Coben
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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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Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.
Harlan Coben
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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
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Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
Harlan Coben
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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
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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.
Harlan Coben
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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
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Only bad writers think they're good.
Harlan Coben
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For a short time, I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do?It takes so much to hold on to hate—you lose your grip on what's important, you know?
Harlan Coben
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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
Harlan Coben
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I still try to make the next book my best book. I want to grip and move you in unexpected ways.
Harlan Coben
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There's always a price you pay when you lie. Once you introduce a lie into a relationship, even for the best of intentions, it is always there. Whenever you’re with that person again, that lie is in the room too. It sits on your shoulder. Good lie or bad lie, it's in the room with you forever now. It's your constant companion.
Harlan Coben
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Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once
Harlan Coben
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You bring your own weather to the picnic.
Harlan Coben
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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
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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
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A dancer on break approached him. She smiled. Each tooth was angled in a different direction, as if her mouth were the masterwork of a mad orthodontist. Hi, she said. Hi. You're really cute. I don't have any money. She spun and walked away. Ah, romance.
Harlan Coben
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In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
Harlan Coben