A Quote by Harlan Coben

I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. — © Harlan Coben
I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves.
The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
You don't have to get married and have a family, like a lot of women try, to live the American Dream. There's nothing wrong if you're in your 40s and don't have kids and are president of your own company.
It's a dream where you live a life that's powerful, one in which you can get married if you want to, raise kids if you want to, get educated to the limit of your capacity, and do what makes you happy, because we all are looking for the good life. We don't want to go through life with just fighting, fighting, fighting.
So often, we blame other people when, really, the problem is right down in here. I'm not happy. I don't know what's wrong. If I just had another job, I could be happy. If I just get married, I would be happy. Well if I just wasn't married, I would be happy. Well, if I just had some kids, I'll be happy. I'll be happy when these kids finally grow up and get out of here. If I had a bigger house, I would be happy. Well, I got a big house. Now if I just had a maid to clean, I'd be happy. Well, now if I just had a maid I could get along with better, I'd be happy.
When [ Paul Johnson] got to me he was in trouble, because I'm an old-fashioned conservative: married when I was 21, stayed married, 3 kids, live in the suburbs, no scandals, so nothing to write about. So what he did is concoct one of the nuttiest claims I've ever seen.
The suburbs are the American dream, right? Living in a nice house, having a good job, a happy family.
I'm a black male, over 40, with no kids, living in the suburbs - they wanted to put me in a museum. Why did I move to the suburbs? I started watching Desperate Housewives. If comedy didn't work out I can always try gardening.
People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused.
I'm happy for people who want to get married but it's not my thing. I'm extremely happy in my relationship and I would love to have kids.
The American Dream has really good PR. It's kind of difficult to live in the United States and not on some level be pulled into the allure of the American Dream. It's in the DNA of the country. So, for a population coming out of slavery, desperate to become part of the full life of the United States, it only makes sense that they would embrace this route to the American Dream.
Growing up, I imagined I would come to New York, get married, move to the suburbs and have kids. It just didn't happen that way.
I thought I'd be living a much more bohemian life and be very poor. I never thought I'd do comedy or be married living in the suburbs. Every time I try to plan my life out it just doesn't come to pass, and I think that's a great experience.
The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and live the good life." King's dream was fundamentally Christian. His commitment to radical love had everything to do with his commitment to Jesus of Nazareth, and his dream had everything to do with community, with a "we" consciousness that included poor and working people around the world, not just black people.
I was able to live out my dream of playing baseball, and I've got to do the same for my kids and let them live out their dreams of whatever they want to do in life.
There is no Croatian dream. There is no European Union dream. There is no Chinese communist dream, except maybe to get out. But there is and always has been an American dream. And the dream is possible. The dream can become real.
As people get older, they get married, have kids. I'm not married. I don't have kids, so I'm able to focus 100 percent on this.
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