Quotes by Harlan Coben

About Harlan Coben:

Harlan Coben is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past (such as murders, fatal accidents, etc.) and often have multiple plot twists. Both series of Coben's books are set in and around New York and New Jersey, and some of the supporting characters in the two series have appeared in both.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Harlan Coben

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' do...

Harlan Coben

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

Harlan Coben

Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.

Harlan Coben

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 w...

Harlan Coben

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

Harlan Coben

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

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 ...

Harlan Coben

Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

Harlan Coben

When you like something and you're pretty good at it and you can make a living doing it, you don't ask why. You just count your blessings and go with it.

Harlan Coben

Only bad writers think they're good.

Harlan Coben

That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight.

Harlan Coben

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

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 anythi...

Harlan Coben

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

More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key.

Harlan Coben

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

Harlan Coben

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...

Harlan Coben

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.

Harlan Coben

Children learn much more from how you act than from what you tell them. There are times this worries me - we parents are rarely the role models we want to be. True for life. True for driving.

Harlan Coben

If I don't write, I hate myself. Simple as that. My life is out of balance.

Harlan Coben

Author Bio

  • NameHarlan Coben
  • DescriptionAuthor
  • BornJanuary 4, 1962
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsEdgar Award