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Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something

Harlan Coben

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Harlan Coben
Age: 63
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
Rationalize
Amazing
Self
Something
Really

More quotes by 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.
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You want this so badly—this second chance, this chance at real redemption—that you can’t see the truth.
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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.
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In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
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There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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You bring your own weather to the picnic.
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A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.
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I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.
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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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Summer romances cometo an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.
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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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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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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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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
Harlan Coben