Harlan Coben
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.
I can write pretty much anywhere if you give me time and some quiet. The home is not usually the best place because I have four children. It's usually pandemonium around here!
Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.
A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made.
When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.
I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, I love to fool you a third time. And just when you think it's all over, I have what I call that Carrie hand-out-of-the-grave moment. Just when you think it's all over, I'm going to hit you with just one more. I can't help myself.
I'm not a big sports fan.
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.
I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.
The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.Collection: Lying
You bring your own weather to the picnic.Collection: Marriage
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 crazyCollection: Dream
The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.Collection: Writing
Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.Collection: Broken
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.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Lying
Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.Collection: Wisdom
Kids don’t do what their parents say-they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?Collection: Kids
..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.Collection: Bullshit
Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.Collection: Return
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.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Writing
I still try to make the "next" book my "best" book. I want to grip and move you in unexpected ways.Collection: Moving
"So basically, that entire theory is blown to hell."Not basically," Win corrected. "Entirely."Collection: Winning
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Summer
You want this so badly—this second chance, this chance at real redemption—that you can’t see the truth.Collection: Real
Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes.Collection: Writing
Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want somethingCollection: Self
A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.Collection: Two
I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.Collection: 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.Collection: Tunes
Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Baby
Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.Collection: Wisdom
You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.Collection: Worry
This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.Collection: Tattoo
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.Collection: Cute
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 okayCollection: Thinking
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.Collection: Games
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.Collection: Believe
Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at onceCollection: Memories
The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn't exist.Collection: Writing
...desperation can toy with you and if you give desperation any wiggle room, it will find alternative answersCollection: Giving
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Crazy
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.Collection: Senior
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.Collection: Reality
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).Collection: Book