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...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers

Harlan Coben

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Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Giving
Toys
Alternative
Alternatives
Room
Rooms
Answers
Give
Wiggle
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Desperation

More quotes by 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 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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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.
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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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.
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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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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Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.
Harlan Coben
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I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
Harlan Coben
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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
Harlan Coben
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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
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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