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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).

Harlan Coben

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Harlan Coben
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Newark
New Jersey
College
Tall
Lives
Features
Living
Male
Amateur
Next
Males
Rural
Might
Six
Campus
Book
Lead
Manhattan
Heart
Missing
Cop
Years
Short
Feature

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You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.
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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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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.
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An hour before his world exploded like a ripe tomato under a stiletto heel, Myron bit into a fresh pastry that tasted suspiciously like urinal cake.
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You bring your own weather to the picnic.
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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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Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once
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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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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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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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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.
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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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...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers
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A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.
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I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.
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In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.
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Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.
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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.
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I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
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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