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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

Alan Furst

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Alan Furst
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Nerve
Nerves
Pretend

More quotes by Alan Furst

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I'm not really a mass market writer.
Alan Furst
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I invented the historical spy novel.
Alan Furst
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The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
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If you're a writer, you're always working.
Alan Furst
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The best Paris I know now is in my head.
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Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
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You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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I read very little contemporary anything.
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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.
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Live today, for tomorrow we die.
Alan Furst
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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
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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.
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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.
Alan Furst
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Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying
Alan Furst
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Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
Alan Furst
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I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
Alan Furst
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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.
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I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
Alan Furst
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I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.
Alan Furst
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You write a lot of books you hope you get better.
Alan Furst