Alan Furst Quotes
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I started writing in my 20s. I just wanted to write, but I didn't have anything to write about, so in the beginning, I wrote entertainments - mainly murder mysteries.
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I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.
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The idea that someone is going to write me, and I'm not going to answer - I was just raised not to do that. We are the result of our upbringing, and my upbringing was very much to meet obligations... You just didn't let things go.
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I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.
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You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
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I've always liked lost, old New York.
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I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
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My grandmother, whom I adored, and who partly raised me, loved Liberace, and she watched Liberace every afternoon, and when she watched Liberace, she'd get dressed up and put on makeup because I think she thought if she could see Liberace, Liberace could see her.
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I had the experience of a monk copying documents, applying myself assiduously to my work. And I thought whatever happened, happened - this is just what I do in my life.
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You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.
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My theory is that sometimes writers write books because they want to read them, and they aren't there to be read. And I think that was true of me.
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You could be a victim, you could be a hero, you could be a villain, or you could be a fugitive. But you could not just stand by. If you were in Europe between 1933 and 1945, you had to be something.
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I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead.
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I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II.
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If I'm a genre writer, I'm at the edge. In the end, they do work like genre fiction. You have a hero, there's a love interest, there's always a chase, there's fighting of some kind. You don't have to do that in a novel. But you do in a genre novel.
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Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.
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French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is.
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The 1930s was a funny time. People knew they might not live for another six months, so if they were attracted to one another, there was no time to dawdle.
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Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.
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Poland is a wildly dramatic and tragic story. It's just unbelievable what went on with those people. How they survive, I don't really know. The Germans had a particular hatred for the Poles; they really considered them subhuman Slavs, and they were very brutal to them.
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I like to say I sit alone in my room, and I fight the language. I am wildly obsessive. I can't let something go if I think it's wrong.
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Venice has always fascinated me. Every country in Europe then was run by kings and the Vatican except Venice, which was basically run by councils. I've always wondered why.
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I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel.
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I would have loved to have another 10 Eric Ambler books.