Alan Furst quotes

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should. (Alan Furst)
Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended. View quote
Alan Furst
I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain. View quote
Alan Furst
Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying. View quote
Alan Furst
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them. View quote
Alan Furst
Good people don't spend their time being good. Good people want to spend their time mowing the lawn and playing with the dog. But bad people spend all their time being bad. It is all they think about. View quote
Alan Furst
If you're a writer, you're always working. View quote
Alan Furst
I invented the historical spy novel. View quote
Alan Furst
The best Paris I know now is in my head. View quote
Alan Furst
My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books. View quote
Alan Furst
I read very little contemporary anything. (Alan Furst)
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days. View quote
Alan Furst
You write a lot of books; you hope you get better. View quote
Alan Furst
Fast-paced from start to finish, 'The Honourable Schoolboy' is fired by le Carre's conviction regarding evil done and its consequences. View quote
Alan Furst
When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality. View quote
Alan Furst
I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer. View quote
Alan Furst
I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books - there are a lot of people like that! That's my audience. View quote
Alan Furst
I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything. View quote
Alan Furst
I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past. View quote
Alan Furst
You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic. View quote
Alan Furst
I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer. (Alan Furst)
I'm not really a mass market writer. View quote
Alan Furst
I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated. View quote
Alan Furst