I’m not really a mass market writer.
ALAN FURSTYou can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
More Alan Furst Quotes
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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
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I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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I invented the historical spy novel.
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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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The best Paris I know now is in my head.
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When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I’m gonna do 320, that’s 160 days.
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I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
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Live today, for tomorrow we die.
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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 expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.
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I don’t inflict horrors on readers.
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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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I don’t just want my books to be about the ’30s and ’40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as ’40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.
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Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
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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.
ALAN FURST