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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.

Harlan Coben

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Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
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More quotes by 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.
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Only bad writers think they're good.
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...better to have loved and lost bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.
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We all think that we are uniquely complex, that no one can see what we are thinking - yet we also believe that we have the rare ability to read others. This fascinates me at the moment.
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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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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.
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For a short time, I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do?It takes so much to hold on to hate—you lose your grip on what's important, you know?
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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
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This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I still try to make the next book my best book. I want to grip and move you in unexpected ways.
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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
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William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down. I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.
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I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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