“I don’t inflict horrors on readers.”

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

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.

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

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.

Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect – in terror.

Japan is the only country that can appeal to the world about the horror of the atomic bomb and the misery of the bombing.

You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.

Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.