I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
ALAN FURSTI’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
ALAN FURSTMy novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.
ALAN FURSTIf you’re a writer, you’re always working.
ALAN FURSTI don’t inflict horrors on readers.
ALAN FURSTOne is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
ALAN FURSTGood people don’t spend their time being good.
ALAN FURSTOn 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 FURSTThe best Paris I know now is in my head.
ALAN FURSTYou write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
ALAN FURSTOnce you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
ALAN FURSTYou can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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.
ALAN FURSTAnd, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.
ALAN FURSTShowing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
ALAN FURSTI invented the historical spy novel.
ALAN FURSTI 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.
ALAN FURST