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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
Living
Male
Amateur
Next
Males
Rural
Might
Six
Campus
Book
Lead
Manhattan
Heart
Missing
Cop
Years
Short
Feature
College
Tall
Lives
Features

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Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.
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Only bad writers think they're good.
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The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.
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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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In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.
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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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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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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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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'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.
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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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...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers
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In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
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