Alan Furst Quotes Quotes

The way I work: I pick a country. I learn the political history - I mean I really learn it; I read until it sinks in. Once I read the political history, I can project and find the clandestine history. And then I people it with the characters.
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.
We're the roughest people in the way we play and live, and that is because Americans come from people who all got up one morning and went 5,000 miles, and that was a time in the 19th century when it wasn't so easy to do.
What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.
What you get in the Cold War is 'the wilderness of mirrors' where you have to figure out what's good and what's evil. That's good for John le Carre, but not me.
When I get asked about novelists I like, they tend to be white, male, and British, like Graham Greene. They write the kind of declarative sentences I like. I don't like to be deflected by acrobatics.
When I read period material - and it ain't on Google - I am always alert for that one incredible detail. I'll read a whole book and get three words out of it, but they'll be three really good words.
When I went to prep school in New York City, I had to ride the subway and learned how to do homework on the train. I can work and read through anything.
When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.
Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.
Women take great care of themselves in France. It's a culture dedicated to making women beautiful and to manners.
Yes, I'm a reasonably good self-taught historian of the 1930s and '40s. I've never wanted to write about another time or place. I wouldn't know what to say about contemporary society.
You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.
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.
You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.
You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
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Alan Furst
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20 February, 1941
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