Alan Furst Quotations | Page 2

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

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

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

Live today, for tomorrow we die.

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.

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.

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.

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.