Harlan Coben Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“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' does that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write.”

“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.”

“I never bought the excuse of not having time to write. If you really want to do it, you're either going to find those hours or eventually decide not to be a writer.”

“If I'm not writing well, I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family, I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme.”

“The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink.”

“I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row, and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal, and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is, it makes the series limited, you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.”