Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Furst
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Thinking
Conservative
Novel
Books
Written
Read
Past
Book
Novels
Think
Narrative

More quotes by Alan Furst

Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm not really a mass market writer.
Alan Furst
Image
I invented the historical spy novel.
Alan Furst
Image
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.
Alan Furst
Image
You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
Alan Furst
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You write a lot of books you hope you get better.
Alan Furst
Image
Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying
Alan Furst
Image
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
Alan Furst
Image
Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.
Alan Furst
Image
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
Image
I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.
Alan Furst
Image
If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.
Alan Furst
Image
I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
Alan Furst
Image
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
Image
I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
Alan Furst
Image
The best Paris I know now is in my head.
Alan Furst
Image
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.
Alan Furst