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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

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No Characters In 'stay

Harlan Coben

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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.

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Black And White

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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.

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.

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Writing A Novel In General Is Like Trying To Reach A Mountain Top You'll Never Quite Reach - So You Try Again And Maybe Get A Little Closer.

It Was One Lesson He Never Forgot.you Don't Sit Back When You Or A Loved One Is Being Assaulted.and You Don't Act Like The Goverment With Their "proportional Responses" And All That Nonsense.if Someone Hurts You,mercy And Pity Must Be Put Aside,you Eliminate The Enemy.you Scorch The Earth.

In Real Life, Coincidences Happen All The Time. In Novels, They Are Leapt Upon With Fury.

Myron Reached For The Phone And Dialed Win's Number. After The Eighth Ring He Began To Hang Up When A Weak, Distant Voice Coughed. "hello?" Win?" Yeah." You Okay?" Hello?" Win?" Yeah." What Took You So Long To Answer The Phone?" Hello?" Win?" Who Is This?" Myron." Myron Bolitar?" How Many Other Myrons Do You Know?" Myron Bolitar?" No, Myron Rockefeller." Something's Wrong," Win Said. What?" Terribly Wrong." What Are You Talking About?" Some Asshole Is Calling Me At Seven In The Morning Pretending To Be My Best Friend." Sorry, I Forgot The Time.

There Is The Old Catch-22 Line That A Mentally Unstable Person Can't Know, As Per Their Illness, That They Are Unstable. But That Was Wrong. You Can And Do Have The Insight To See Your Own Crazy.

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.

You Don't Worry About Happiness And Fulfilment When You're Starving.

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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.

"so Basically, That Entire Theory Is Blown To Hell."not Basically," Win Corrected. "entirely."

I Wish I Could Tell You That Through The Tragedy I Mined Some Undiscovered, Life-altering Absolute That I Could Pass On To You.i Didn't.the Cliches Apply-people Are What Count,life Is Precious,materialism Is Over Rated, And The Little Things Matter,live In The Moment-and I Can Repeat Them To You Ad Nauseam.you Might Listen, But You Won't Internalize.tragedy Hammers It Hm.tragedy Etches Into Your Soul.you Might Not Be Happier.but You Will Be Better.

Live In The Moment

I Remember One Time I Heard This English Professor Asking The Class What The World's Scariest Noise Is. Is It A Man Crying Out In Pain? A Woman's Scream Of Terror? A Gunshot? A Baby Crying? And The Professor Shakes His Head And Says, 'no, The Scariest Noise Is, You're All Alone In Your Dark House, You Know You're All Alone, You Know That There Is No Chance Anyone Else Is Home Or Within Miles—and Then, Suddenly, From Upstairs, You Hear The Toilet Flush.

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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.

What I Want To Do Is Tell Stories About Normal People In The American Suburbs. I Don't Write The Book Where It's A Conspiracy Reaching The Prime Minister; I Don't Write The Book With The Big Serial Killer Who Lops Off Heads. My Setting Is A Very Placid Pool Of Suburbia, Family Life. And Within That I Can Make Pretty Big Splashes.

Frankly I'm Fairly Boring Or Fairly Busy. Between Writing And Family, I Have Little Time For Anything Else.

Genius Is A Curse. That's How I Look At It. Some Think That The Brilliant Comprehend The Universe In A Way The Rest Of Us Can't. They See The World How It Truly Is—and That Reality Is So Horrible The Lose Their Minds. Clarity Leads To Insanity.

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Sometimes The Loudest Cries For Help Are Silent.

Asking For Help

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.

Black And White

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..."better To Have Loved And Lost" Bullshit. Don't Show Me Paradise And Then Burn It Down.

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The Actual Writing Time Is A Lot Shorter Than The Thinking Time.

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I'd Never Had Money Growing Up, And It's Never Been That Important To Me, Except Maybe To Take Our Kids On A Nice Vacation Or Something Like That.

That’s The Problem With Falling In Love. It Makes You Start Talking Like A Bad Country Song

Falling In Love

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.

For A Short Time, I Hated Them. But When You Think About It, What Good Does That Do?it Takes So Much To Hold On To Hate—you Lose Your Grip On What's Important, You Know?

I'm Not Very Happy Idle. There's Always This Voice In My Head That Says, 'i Should Be Writing.

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I Try To Stress To My Children That Buying Something Never Leads To True Happiness.

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I Love To Make Even Villains People You Can Relate To. When You Find Out Who Did It, I Think You Almost Like The Person, Which Is Not Easy To Do.

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Trust Is Like That. You Can Break It For A Good Reason. But It Still Remains Broken.

I Love Stories. When I'm Writing, What I Pretend Subconsciously Is That We're Cavemen, We're Sitting Around The Fire, And I'm Telling You Stories. If I Bore You, You're Probably Going To Pick Up A Big Club And Hit Me Over The Head.

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But Sometimes, Maybe Most Times, It Isn't That Clear. It Is Dark And You Are Near The Edge Of A Cliff, But You're Moving Slowly, Not Sure Which Direction You're Heading In. Your Steps Are Tentative But They Are Still Blind In The Night. You Don't Realize How Close You Are To The Edge, How The Soft Earth Could Give Away, How You Could Just Slip A Bit And Suddenly Plunge Into The Dark.

Amazing What We Can Self-rationalize When We Really Want Something

Im 48 Years Old, Not A Kid Anymore By Any Definition, But Here Is A Universal Truth That Every Adult At Some Point Will Realize: We Are All Always 17 Years Old, Waiting For Our Lives To Begin.

We're Called New Jersey But We're Actually The Suburbs Of New York.

I Don't Necessarily Love The Sports Per Se, I Love The Stories Behind Them. Also In A Kind Of Perverse Way I Like To Study What It Does To Us, Why We Care So Much. It's Caring About Something That's Utterly Meaningless.

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.

I Always Think The Insecurity Is Going To Go Away, But It's Always There. Only Bad Writers Think They're Good.

You Can't Have An Up Without A Down, A Right Without A Left, A Back Without A Front - Or A Happy Without A Sad.

An Hour Before His World Exploded Like A Ripe Tomato Under A Stiletto Heel, Myron Bit Into A Fresh Pastry That Tasted Suspiciously Like Urinal Cake.

We All Think That We Are Uniquely Complex, That No One Can See What We Are Thinking - Yet We Also Believe That We Have The Rare Ability To Read Others. This Fascinates Me At The Moment.

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.

Part Of The Human Condition Is That We All Think That We Are Uniquely Complex While Everyone Else Is Somewhat Simpler To Read. That Is Not True, Of Course. We All Have Our Own Dreams And Hopes And Wants And Lust And Heartaches. We All Have Our Own Brand Of Crazy

You Want This So Badly—this Second Chance, This Chance At Real Redemption—that You Can’t See The Truth.

I'm A Little Bit Of A Control Freak.

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.

Summer Romances Cometo An End. That Was Part Of The Deal. They Are Built Like Certain Plants Or Insects, Not Able To Survive More Than One Season. I Thought We Would Be Different. We Were, I Guess, But Not In The Way I Thought. I Truly Believed That We Would Never Let Each Other Go. The Young Are So Dumb.

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 What Readers Are Responding To.

So Basically Your Plan Is To Flail About Helplessly.

Its Funny How You Can Let Yourself Forget For Seconds, How Even In The Heat Of The Horrible, You Can Have Moments When You Fool Yourself Into Thinking It Might All Be Okay

A Novel Is Like A Sausage. You Might Like The Final Taste But You Don't Want To See How It Was Made.

Years Fly By, But The Heart Stays In The Same Place.

William Goldman's Marathon Man Was A Novel That Taught Me About Suspense. I Was Maybe 16 Years Old When I Read It And I Remember Thinking, "you Could Put A Gun To My Head And I Wouldn't Put This Book Down." I Loved That Feeling - And Want To Give It Others.

Writers Always Say, 'i Always Knew I Wanted To Be A Writer; When I Was A Three-month-old Foetus A Pen Formed In My Hand And I Began To Scratch My First Story On The Inside Of My Mother's Womb.' I Started Later, In My Early Twenties.

I've Never Chased The Dollar, I've Always Chased The Reader's Heart. I Love Having More Readers. The More People Who Read It, The More Thrilled I Am.

There Is A Certain Fate To The Universe And A Certain Randomness.

Man Plans. God Laughs.

Painful Memories Didn't Just Ease Back In-they Shoved The Door Open Hard, All Of Them And All At Once

Only Bad Writers Think They're Good.

I'm Thinking Of Taking Up Golf, But The Idea Of Spending Time With Golfers Frightens Me.

A Trial Is Two Narratives Competing For Your Attention.

Sometimes Even When The Book Is Over I Dont Know Whos Good And Whos Bad. Its Really More Interesting, I Think, To Write About Gray Characters Than It Is To Write About Black And White.

There Are Few Times That I Feel More At Peace, More In Tune, More Zen, If You Will, Than When I Force Myself To Unplug.

Kids Don’t Do What Their Parents Say-they Do What They See Their Parents Do. So Who Was To Blame Here?

Kate Atkinson Is An Absolute Must-read. I Love Everything She Writes.

There Are Three Things That Make A Person A Writer: Inspiration, Perspiration And Desperation.

This Was A Place Where Tattoos Outnumbered Teeth.

In Short, The Satisfaction Of Creating, Not Necessarily The Process, Always Lifts My Heart.

Getting Into A Fight With A Popular Senior. Pissing Off A School Teacher And The Local Chief Of Police. Hanging With Two Major-league Losers." She Slapped My Back. "welcome To High School.

When I Was Seventeen, I Worked As A Counsellor At A Co-ed Sleep-away Camp For Eight Weeks. I Loved It But It Could Be Harrowing - It Was Far Too Much Responsibility For Someone My Age.

I Used To Wonder Why Lucy Liked Those Songs So Much. You Know What I Mean? She Sits In The Dark And Listens And Cries. Music Does That To Her...i Didn't Understand For A Long Time. But I Do Now. The Sad Songs Are A Safe Hurt. It's A Diversion. It's Controlled. And Maybe It Helps You Imagine That Real Pain Will Be Like That. But It's Not. Lucy Knows That, Of Course. You Can't Prepare For Real Pain. You Just Have To Let It Rip You Apart.

I Don't Find Any Real Rivalries With Crime And Thriller Writers Anyway. That Might Sound A Little Pollyanna, But For The Most Part The Writers I Compete With, If You Want To Use That Word, It's A Pretty Friendly Rivalry. I Think We All Realise That The Boat Rises And Sinks Together.

If I Had, Say, A Tall, Amateur Male Lead Living On The Campus Of A Rural College (six Years), The Next Book Might Feature A Short, Cop Who Lives In The Heart Of Manhattan (missing You).

A Dancer On Break Approached Him. She Smiled. Each Tooth Was Angled In A Different Direction, As If Her Mouth Were The Masterwork Of A Mad Orthodontist. "hi," She Said. "hi." "you're Really Cute." "i Don't Have Any Money." She Spun And Walked Away. Ah, Romance.

You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic.

I Once Worked As A Tour Guide In The Costa Del Sol Of Spain.

I Pretty Much Only Wear Lilly Pulitzer Ties Because My Best Friend Owns The Company.

Memories, You See, Hurt. The Good Ones Most Of All.

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