I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers.
ALAN FURSTI don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
More Alan Furst Quotes
-
-
Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
ALAN FURST -
I’m not really a mass market writer.
ALAN FURST -
the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
ALAN FURST -
And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.
ALAN FURST -
I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
ALAN FURST -
I expect them to have read books – there are a lot of people like that! That’s my audience.
ALAN FURST -
I invented the historical spy novel.
ALAN FURST -
You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
ALAN FURST -
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 -
Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It’s where it all began and ended.
ALAN FURST -
I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
ALAN FURST -
I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.
ALAN FURST -
Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower – translated from a French saying
ALAN FURST -
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 -
Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus.
ALAN FURST






