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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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Alan Furst
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Paris
Began
Western
Whether
Heart
Like
Civilisation
Beating
Ended

More quotes by Alan Furst

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I read very little contemporary anything.
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I'm not really a mass market writer.
Alan Furst
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My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.
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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
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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.
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Live today, for tomorrow we die.
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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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Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
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If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.
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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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You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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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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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.
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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.
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I don't inflict horrors on readers.
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I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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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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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
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I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.
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You write a lot of books you hope you get better.
Alan Furst