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

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.

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.

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

Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn’t know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

What are kings, when regiment is gone, but perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

The day you die is just like any other, only shorter.

It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.

You are my day and night. The first thought when I wake, the last thing on my mind; before I slip into the moons starry sky.

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don’t need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days.