“I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.”

Live today, for tomorrow we die.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower – translated from a French saying

And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.

I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

I’m a genre writer.

I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.

the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said

I don’t inflict horrors on readers.

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It’s where it all began and ended.

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.

My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.

Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.

You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

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.

When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I’m gonna do 320, that’s 160 days.

The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency.

Calling your name, the only language I can speak.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

As was his language so was his life.

The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.

It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time.

Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.

I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.