Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
ALAN FURSTGood 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.
More Alan Furst Quotes
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The best Paris I know now is in my head.
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I expect them to have read books – there are a lot of people like that! That’s my audience.
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I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers.
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I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
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I invented the historical spy novel.
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It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book.
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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
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You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
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Good people don’t spend their time being good.
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I read very little contemporary anything.
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You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
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Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
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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.
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Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower – translated from a French saying
ALAN FURST