“Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.”

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.

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

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

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

You know, I was once named Minor League Player of the Year… unfortunately, I had been in the majors for two years at the time.

I didn’t get a lot of awards as a player. But they did have a Bob Uecker Day Off for me once in Philly.

It’s Satan’s delight to tell me that once he’s got me, he will keep me. But at that moment I can go back to God.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

I have never, not once, violated my public trust.

Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.