Charles McCarry
Charles McCarry
Charles McCarryis an American writer, primarily of spy fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
interested
China, hidden and mysterious, has always interested me.
dried entire finished pool secret
I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.
delivered front gotten writers
Other writers tell me about these bushel baskets delivered at the front door. If I've gotten 50 letters over the last 18 years, I'd be surprised.
general peculiar point realize
I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.
conversation fill matter people remember wonder
People are dying to tell you their secrets; it's just a matter of getting the conversation going in the right direction. If you just let people fill the silence, they will let you the most extraordinary things. I sometimes wonder if afterward they remember what they've said.
large
When it comes to the assignment of blame, the CIA has by and large been a luckless organization.
admired course writers
I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I must be. The writers I've admired have been not so very different from myself: Evelyn Waugh, for example, that kind of crystalline prose. And I've always admired W. Somerset Maugham more than any other writer.
espionage
Espionage and counterespionage go together like horse and carriage.
den dinner european meat paris piece raw
There's nothing new about European anti-Americanism. To go to a dinner party of intellectuals in Paris in 1960 was like walking into a tiger's den with a piece of raw meat in your hands.
bad full next
Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.
achieve among factor far life taught though time trying
Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.
again appeared characters coming expected nowhere paul persistent whom
Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn't expect to see again after he appeared in 'The Miernik Dossier.'
creates loaded
Anything that's secret, clandestine, loaded with such a supercargo of speculation, misinformation, disinformation and, for that matter, accurate revelations, creates an appetite.
civil intelligence people series work
I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've always said that I've been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.