Quote

I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.

Harlan Coben

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Writers
Away
Going
Good
Always
Think
Thinking
Insecurity

More quotes by Harlan Coben

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart.
Harlan Coben
Image
I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.
Harlan Coben
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Its funny how you can let yourself forget for seconds, how even in the heat of the horrible, you can have moments when you fool yourself into thinking it might all be okay
Harlan Coben
Image
You want this so badly—this second chance, this chance at real redemption—that you can’t see the truth.
Harlan Coben
Image
Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.
Harlan Coben
Image
It was one lesson he never forgot.You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted.And you don't act like the goverment with their proportional responses and all that nonsense.If someone hurts you,mercy and pity must be put aside,You eliminate the enemy.You scorch the earth.
Harlan Coben
Image
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
Image
If I had, say, a tall, amateur male lead living on the campus of a rural college (Six Years), the next book might feature a short, cop who lives in the heart of Manhattan (Missing You).
Harlan Coben
Image
This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.
Harlan Coben
Image
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
Image
Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something
Harlan Coben
Image
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
Image
What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever.
Harlan Coben
Image
There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
Harlan Coben
Image
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