Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent. Harlan Coben More Quotes by Harlan Coben More Quotes From Harlan Coben Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place. Harlan Coben heartloveyears I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness. Harlan Coben stresstryingchildren 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. Harlan Coben realheartchildren Life may not always fall into neat chapters, and you may not always get the satisfying ending you're looking for, but sometimes a good explanation is all the rewrite you need. Harlan Coben mayfallneeds The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. Harlan Coben writingthinking 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. Harlan Coben lastsperceptionplay I'm also inspired by anything that I consider great. It makes me want to raise my game too - Hitchcock movies, Hopper paintings, Springsteen concerts. Harlan Coben paintinggameswant 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. Harlan Coben realwritinghands 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. Harlan Coben horrorviolenceheart 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 romancedumbsummer I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company. Harlan Coben my-best-friendtiesfriendship Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes. Harlan Coben kateabsoluteswriting 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. Harlan Coben dreamkidshappy-life 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. Harlan Coben strugglewritingbook Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something Harlan Coben want-somethingselfwant There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy. Harlan Coben illnesslinescrazy Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else. Harlan Coben busywritinglittles This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth. Harlan Coben teethtattoo You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving. Harlan Coben fulfilmentstarvingworry You can't have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front - or a happy without a sad. Harlan Coben leftfronts
