You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
ALAN FURSTAnd, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.
More Alan Furst Quotes
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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.
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I’m not really a mass market writer.
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You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
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I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
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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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Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
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It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book.
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And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania.
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I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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I don’t inflict horrors on readers.
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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 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.
ALAN FURST