'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won't work. ~Harlan Coben
Work Forgiveness Past
A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made. ~Harlan Coben
Want You See
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
Love Time Fool
Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell. ~Harlan Coben
Hope Heart World
I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good. ~Harlan Coben
Good Think Insecurity
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
Heart I Am Violence
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 fair. ~Harlan Coben
Baseball Good Evil
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
Life Happy American Dream
I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.' ~Harlan Coben
Happy Writing Voice
If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills. ~Harlan Coben
Skills Like Other
In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. ~Harlan Coben
Life Time Real
In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it. ~Harlan Coben
Work Happy End
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
Life Writing Me
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
Life Good May
Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed. ~Harlan Coben
War Mistake Adolescence
More than once, I've wished my real life had a delete key. ~Harlan Coben
Life Key Real
No characters in 'Stay Close,' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer. ~Harlan Coben
Experience Black Reading
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. ~Harlan Coben
Time Book Thinking
The muse is not an angelic voice that sits on your shoulder and sings sweetly. The muse is the most annoying whine. The muse isn't hard to find, just hard to like - she follows you everywhere, tapping you on the shoulder, demanding that you stop doing whatever else you might be doing and pay attention to her. ~Harlan Coben
Doing Voice You
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
Life Work Happy