Harlan Coben Quotes

You bring your own weather to the picnic.

The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.

Only bad writers think they're good.

Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.

Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy

Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

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.

A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made.

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.

I'm a little bit of a control freak.

I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.

Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.

Im 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition, but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin.

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.

There's always a price you pay when you lie. Once you introduce a lie into a relationship, even for the best of intentions, it is always there. Whenever you’re with that person again, that lie is in the room too. It sits on your shoulder. Good lie or bad lie, it's in the room with you forever now. It's your constant companion.

Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.

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.

The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to.

But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn't that clear. It is dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you're moving slowly, not sure which direction you're heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You don't realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.

This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.

Kids don’t do what their parents say-they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?

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.

Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once

Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place.

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.

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.

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.

I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company.

The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.

I remember one time I heard this English professor asking the class what the world's scariest noise is. Is it a man crying out in pain? A woman's scream of terror? A gunshot? A baby crying? And the professor shakes his head and says, 'No, the scariest noise is, you're all alone in your dark house, you know you're all alone, you know that there is no chance anyone else is home or within miles—and then, suddenly, from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush.

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.

I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.

I am, after all, a thriller writer. I routinely delve into the darkest chambers of the human heart. I've written about murder, kidnapping, depravity, horror, violence, and disfigurement.

Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.

And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often - very last paragraph sometimes - I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different.

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.

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.

I still try to make the "next" book my "best" book. I want to grip and move you in unexpected ways.

No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer.

Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict, but it's a hell of a teacher.

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).

I would rather raise certain topics and maybe let you ruminate on them. I'm not big on answering them.

The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.

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.

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.

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.