Harlan Coben

So I'm not even the biggest selling author in my own fraternity at a college with less than 400 people per grade.

So...

But what we were taught was we would read philosophies and theories and arguments, and then our job would be to defend them and tear them apart.

Didn't matter who they were.

Didn't matter if we loved them or hated them.

We had to defend them and look at them.

That's critical thinking.

And it's really important in writing.

I write twisty stuff.

I write very plot-heavy stuff.

very twisted, a lot of twists and turns and trying to fool you things.

And so I have to be able to see four or five steps ahead and come up with a lot of what ifs.

That's really what my job is, a lot of what ifs.

So I think that education really helped with that.

Well, it was interesting that we had a number of years apart.

So my older brother was three and a half years older than me, but because of his genius.

And I say that, I mean, he was in, one day he went to school when he was in third grade and they just moved his desk down to fourth grade.

And all of a sudden he was with kids a year older, which I think was devastating for him and a big mistake on my parents.

But so we were fairly separated by school by almost five years.

My younger brother's five years younger than me.