“If you’re a writer, you’re always working.”

I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

I’m a genre writer.

I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.

the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said

I don’t inflict horrors on readers.

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It’s where it all began and ended.

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.

My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else’s books.

Showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.

You can’t make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

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.

When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I’m gonna do 320, that’s 160 days.

The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.

I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

I believe in your dreams. The sweetest words to a writer’s ears.

I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.

Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.

You can’t be a good writer without being a good thinker.

No matter what I do I’m still not the best writer for you.

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven’t got to try and interpret someone’s writing; it’s all theirs. I really admire that.

However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world.