As an honest person who liked a laugh.

As someone who left the world around me a little kinder and less hierarchical.

Not at all! I don’t think that you can really choose what people will like, or say, or even remember about you. I mean, my God, probably the Birkin bag will be known. … If I look myself to find out the date of something — and the first thing that pops up is that bloody bag! I think it’ll be “Je T’aime Moi Non Plus,” when I go feet first, that’ll be the tune they’ll play on the television, and then talk about the bag

It’s up to them.

I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.

I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”

A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.

I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.

We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.