Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
Harlan Coben
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Things
Perspiration
Desperation
Writer
Inspiration
Three
Persons
Person
Make
More quotes by Harlan Coben
The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
Harlan Coben
That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song
Harlan Coben
There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.
Harlan Coben
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
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
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
There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy.
Harlan Coben
I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.
Harlan Coben
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
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
You want this so badly—this second chance, this chance at real redemption—that you can’t see the truth.
Harlan Coben
...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers
Harlan Coben
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
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
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
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
In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
Harlan Coben
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
Genius is a curse. That's how I look at it. Some think that the brilliant comprehend the universe in a way the rest of us can't. They see the world how it truly is—and that reality is so horrible the lose their minds. Clarity leads to insanity.
Harlan Coben
I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
Harlan Coben
