Harlan Coben Quotes

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.

That's the most amazing thing about writing, whether it's in prose or comics: that you can create something from nothing, and suddenly they come to life, like they've always been there.

There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part.

There is a certain joy in telling a story, and it gives me great pleasure to be a part of the process from scratch and say it the way I want to.

Storytelling is really at the root of everything that I do.

Writing, when it works, one needs to access whatever it is that creates dreams.

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.

Everything in the world was about creativity: belief and creation. Storytelling was the essence of both.

This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-f ly-apart-disint egrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?

If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?