Alan Furst Quotes
I figured I would always be a candidate for man of the year in the virtue-is-its-own-reward category. What that did was force me to concentrate on the work.

Quotes to Explore
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It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.
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My memory of my home was that it was very happy, and that there was more fun and life there than there was anywhere else.
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I have to be on such a strict diet constantly.
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With a poetry book I can send 100 copies out to reviewers and other people, and even do it in advance and get their response. It's difficult with iPad: how do you send it out for free, and how do you even disseminate it before it goes into their store?
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Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives.
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NRDC has helped bring hope spots to more of our shared ocean waters. We helped draft and pass a California law creating a network of underwater parks stretching from the Oregon border to the Mexican border.
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The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
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It's the fans that need spring training. You gotta get 'em interested. Wake 'em up and let 'em know that their season is coming, the good times are gonna roll.
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Though social eugenics was discredited long ago, we still often think of the genome in quasi-eugenic terms. When we read about the latest discovery of a link between a gene and a disease, we imagine that we've learned the cause of the disease, and we may even think we'll get a cure by fixing the gene.
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Sometimes those big bloated superhero movies take themselves too seriously compared to the material they were based on. Am I going to listen to psychoanalysis from someone with a mask?
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Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.
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In my next life, I want to be a housecat. Naps all the time!
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I believe there is a direct correlation between love and laughter.
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Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
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Many men start being friendly with women because they are trying to seduce them. I'm not trying to seduce them. I just like hanging out with them.
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I always try to start my weekend by running on the beach, which is great fun here in Barcelona.
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Lastly, his tomb shall list and founder in the troughs of grass. And none shall speak his name.
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I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired.
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South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison.
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I'm a Hawaiian shirt guy. I've made that life decision.
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Dance music has evolved very much. From DJs playing at the Olympics, to playing at the Super Bowl, working with Cirque Du Soleil and even getting recognized at the Grammys with awards, dance music is growing in a big way.
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The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the 'superconscious' has already shown me in a story or poem.
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I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.
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I figured I would always be a candidate for man of the year in the virtue-is-its-own-reward category. What that did was force me to concentrate on the work.