Harlan Coben: The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinki...

I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.

Harlan Coben

boring would-be writing

There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.

Harlan Coben

force tunes feels

I once worked as a tour guide in the Costa del Sol of Spain.

Harlan Coben

tour-guides spain guides

I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.

Harlan Coben

voice should writing

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.

Harlan Coben

villain people thinking

In short, the satisfaction of creating, not necessarily the process, always lifts my heart.

Harlan Coben

creating satisfaction heart

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

inspiration real jobs

No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.

Harlan Coben

heartache sleep thinking

That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song

Harlan Coben

falling-in-love song country

"So basically, that entire theory is blown to hell."Not basically," Win corrected. "Entirely."

Harlan Coben

hell theory winning

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

twenties mother hands

...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answers

Harlan Coben

alternatives answers giving

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

Harlan Coben

fool might thinking

I used to wonder why Lucy liked those songs so much. You know what I mean? She sits in the dark and listens and cries. Music does that to her...I didn't understand for a long time. But I do now. The sad songs are a safe hurt. It's a diversion. It's controlled. And maybe it helps you imagine that real pain will be like that. But it's not. Lucy knows that, of course. You can't prepare for real pain. You just have to let it rip you apart.

Harlan Coben

pain hurt song

I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.

Harlan Coben

bars coffee writing

I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better.

Harlan Coben

soul live-in-the-moment people

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

encouragement writing book

When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.

Harlan Coben

eight responsibility sleep

We're called New Jersey but we're actually the suburbs of New York.

Harlan Coben

suburbs jersey new-york

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.

Harlan Coben

writing book people

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1.