Alan Furst Quotes

Alan Furst is an American author known for his historical spy novels set in Europe before and during World War II. Furst's meticulously researched novels capture the atmosphere and intrigue of the era, and his evocative writing style has garnered critical acclaim. His works have found a dedicated readership and have solidified his place in the spy fiction genre.

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.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.... -Alan Furst

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, bu... -Alan Furst

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.

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.

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.

In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.

I've evolved in my writing to tell a more emotional story - my publisher, Random House, has urged that.

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.

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.

You can't make accommodations in crucial situation... -Alan Furst

You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

I am there to entertain. I call my work high escape fiction; it's high, it's good - but it's escape, and I have no delusions about that. I have no ambition to be a serious writer, whatever that means.

If you're a writer, you're always working.... -Alan Furst

If you're a writer, you're always working.

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.

I wrote three mysteries and then a contemporary spy novel that was unbelievably derivative - completely based on 'The Conversation,' the movie with Gene Hackman. Amazingly, the character in the book looks exactly like... Gene Hackman.

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.

I've never lived in Eastern Europe, although both my wife and I have ancestors in Poland and Russia - but I can see the scenes I create.

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.

I read very little contemporary anything... I don't think I read what other people read, but then why would I, considering what I do?

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.... -Alan Furst

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a sim... -Alan Furst

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

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.

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.

Seattle's support system got me through those early, difficult years. It was a very funky, very friendly, very relaxed place that had it all for a writer.

Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best.

I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.

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 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.

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such bri... -Alan Furst

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.

The brutalization of humans by other humans never fails to get to me in some angry-making way. It shot up in me like an explosion.

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