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

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.

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.

There should be three days a week when no one is allowed to say: ‘What’s your sign?’ Violators would have their copies of Kahlil Gibran confiscated.

Today is the first and last day of forever.

We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.

I chose myself today, not over you. I can never do that, and you know that well. I just chose the new me over my past self.

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.

One day someone will see a light in you.

I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.