I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
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.
More Alan Furst Quotes
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I’m a genre writer.
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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 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.
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Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus.
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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.
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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 really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
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I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book.
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My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.
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Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
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I invented the historical spy novel.
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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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Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
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One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
ALAN FURST