Alan Furst famous quotes

04-08-2025

Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
-- Alan Furst

#Dog #Believe #Talking
Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended,
-- Alan Furst

#Heart #Paris #You Like It
One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
-- Alan Furst

#Nerves
If you're a writer, you're always working.
-- Alan Furst
My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.
-- Alan Furst

#Book #Reality #Want
The best Paris I know now is in my head.
-- Alan Furst

#Paris
I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
-- Alan Furst

#West #Sides
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.
-- Alan Furst

#Writing #Character
You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
-- Alan Furst

#Book #Writing #Get Better
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.
-- Alan Furst

#Book #Past #Thinking
I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books - there are a lot of people like that! That's my audience.
-- Alan Furst

#Book #Europe #People
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

#Office #Brain #Want
If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.
-- Alan Furst

#Paris #Should
I'm not really a mass market writer.
-- Alan Furst

#Mass
I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.
-- Alan Furst

#Writing #People #Sophisticated
Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying
-- Alan Furst

#Flower
The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
-- Alan Furst

#Wise #Bankers #Paper
And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, 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.
-- Alan Furst

#Army #Europe #Greek
You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
-- Alan Furst

#Heroic #Accommodations #Situation
Good people don't spend their time being good. 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

#Dog #Thinking #People
I don't inflict horrors on readers.
-- Alan Furst

#Horror #Reader
I invented the historical spy novel.
-- Alan Furst

#Historical #Spy #Novel
I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
-- Alan Furst

#Writing #Plot #Use
I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.
-- Alan Furst

#Reading #Degrees #Eric
I read very little contemporary anything.
-- Alan Furst

#Littles #Contemporary
Live today, for tomorrow we die.
-- Alan Furst

#Live For Today #Today #Tomorrow

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