#writ

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

#back #back up #big #cleaned #draft

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. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#always #because #book #father #first

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. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#american #big #book #conspiracy #family

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#around #before #book #doing #each

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell. ↗

— Jack Vance

#i #just #like #seemed #sell

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#backward #commissions #dared #down #fall

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful. ↗

— Jack Vance

#had #his #imagination #smith #talented

It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' ↗

— Albert Finney

#blank canvas #canvas #down #front #gregarious

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#books #i #into #keeping #novels

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control. ↗

— Jonathan Coe

#accidental #always #attempting #choices #context