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...better to have loved and lost bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.

Harlan Coben

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Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Lost
Shows
Better
Bullshit
Burn
Paradise
Loved
Show

More quotes by Harlan Coben

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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
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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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I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.
Harlan Coben
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Getting into a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a school teacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers. She slapped my back. Welcome to high school.
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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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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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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In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
Harlan Coben
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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
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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
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A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.
Harlan Coben
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Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.
Harlan Coben
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Writing a novel in general is like trying to reach a mountain top you'll never quite reach - so you try again and maybe get a little closer.
Harlan Coben
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That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song
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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You want this so badly—this second chance, this chance at real redemption—that you can’t see the truth.
Harlan Coben
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Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something
Harlan Coben
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I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.
Harlan Coben
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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