Harlan Coben Quotes

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

When I first starting writing, and no one was paying me, in order to feel like I had a real job, I would get out of bed, put on a jacket and tie every morning, and sit down at my desk.

No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

I love it when I start a book that is so good that all I want to do is get back to my own writing, in a competitive way.

I'm very aware when I share a stage with other writers that I'm much less driven than they are. I don't wake up in the middle of the night, pregnant with paragraphs. I don't suffer for my text twenty-four hours a day.

I think every script I read has something that sends me into a state of panic but that usually makes me want to do it.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

I don't think writers should have writer's block. I think they should write. Imagine you were a bus driver and you said, 'I've got bus driver's block.' Get over it.

People still struggle with this notion of gifted writers somehow being in touch with a higher power, but it's all about showing up and doing the job, meeting deadlines, working hard.

Writing, for me at least, takes a lot of concentrated work and effort. It takes dedication and the willingness to do the work even when that feeling of inspiration isn't there at all.

My grandparents taught me about hard work, about fear of failure.

I don't procrastinate because I love the English language and the process of storytelling, and I'm always curious to see what will come to me next. If you procrastinate a lot, you might be one who loves having written, but doesn't so much like writing.

I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.

Ultimately, you have to write what's coming at any given point in time. Fighting your instincts for practical reasons is a losing battle.

You just have to sit down and write the next book. I mean, it's not all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book.

Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.

I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I'm playing.

People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.

Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

My agent, Jeff Andrews, suggested I write a book. For some reason. he doesn't like it when I'm not doing anything.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.