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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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Alan Furst
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Everything
Plots
Writing
Engine
Really
Drives
Engines
Plot
Use
History
Write

More quotes by 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 inflict horrors on readers.
Alan Furst
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And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.
Alan Furst
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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.
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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.
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.
Alan Furst
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If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.
Alan Furst
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You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
Alan Furst
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Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.
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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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.
Alan Furst
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I read very little contemporary anything.
Alan Furst
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Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
Alan Furst
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The best Paris I know now is in my head.
Alan Furst
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My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.
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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I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
Alan Furst