In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
Harlan CobenRead
There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A writer needs a blend of creativity, hard work, and a sense of urgency or need.
Harlan Coben's quote encapsulates the three essential elements that drive a person to write: inspiration, which fuels creativity; perspiration, representing the effort and dedication required to hone one's craft; and desperation, the urgent emotional drive that often motivates writers to put their thoughts into words. Together, these components highlight that writing is not merely a talent, but a complex interplay of creativity, hard work, and personal necessity.
Themes
WriterInspirationPerspirationDesperationCreativityEffort
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the writing process, one might say, 'As Harlan Coben wisely noted, there are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration, and desperation.'
More from Harlan Coben
All quotes →The ugliest truth, in the end, was still better than the prettiest of lies.
Harlan CobenRead
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.
Harlan CobenRead
No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.
Harlan CobenRead
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 CobenRead
The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn't exist.
Harlan CobenRead
Similar quotes
You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The process is much more meditative for me.
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don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.
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To see something spectacular and recognise it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you’d see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility - that is what I am interested in.
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My metaphor for translation has always been that translation is really a performance art. You take the original and try to perform it, really, in a different medium. Part of that is about interpretation and what you think the author's voice really is.
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Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.
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Color is sensibility in material form, matter in its primordial state.
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