Quotes by Alan Furst - Page 2

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.
Alan Furst / Author
Eastern
Eastern Europe
Poland
Russia
Ancestors
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I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.
Alan Furst / Author
Contemporary
Life Always My Life
Escape
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Theory
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Pleasurable
Repeat
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Tone
Absolute
Literary
Robert
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Homework
New York City
Subway
Work City New
Prep
Ride
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'The Levanter' features some of the strongest action scenes to be found in Ambler - who can, in some of his fiction, stay in one place for a whole novel.
Alan Furst / Author
Features
Strongest
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Friendly
Funky
Relaxed
Seattle
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Months
Six
Funny Time People
No Time
Time People
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Work Man Me
Category
Work Always Man
Candidate
Figured
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Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said
Alan Furst / Author
Believe
Dog
Talking
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Cold
Cold War
Evil
Mirrors
Wilderness
War Good Me
Figure
John
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Russians
Conflicts
Germans
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It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
Alan Furst / Author
Book
Nine
Nine Months
Pages
Two
Writing
Work Me Day
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The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and peasants starved.
Alan Furst / Author
Wise
Bankers
Paper
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If you read the history of the national Socialist party, they're all people who felt like life should have been better to them. They're disappointed, vengeful, angry.
Alan Furst / Author
History
Angry
Disappointed
Party
Socialist
Socialist Party
Vengeful
All People
Read
National
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Beginning
In The Beginning
Mainly
Mysteries
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Copying
Documents
Monk
Life Work Experience
Applying
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Anthropology
English Major
Margaret
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Country
Europe
Fascinated
Venice
Always Me Why
Always Me Country
Basically
Run
Except
Vatican
Wondered
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Another Time
Contemporary
Contemporary Society
Historian
Self Taught
Reasonably
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I look for the dark story, where something secret was done. I read and read and pick up the trail of a true story. I use nothing but true stories. They are so much better than phony ones.
Alan Furst / Author
Phony
True Story
Trail
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I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain.
Alan Furst / Author
Brain
Censorship
Never Forget
Office
Want
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I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.
Alan Furst / Author
Book
Narrative
Past
Thinking
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Broke
Dissertation
Unemployment
Typewriter
Insurance
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Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction.
Alan Furst / Author
All Time
Amused
Brilliant
Cold
Cold War
Perfect
Smiley
Spy
Voice
Bureaucrat
George
Harassed
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Book
Europe
Foreign Language
People
Readers
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Good Words
Good Always I Am
Alert
Detail
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Fugitive
Hero
Villain
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Novelists
Sentences
Male
Graham
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Good people don't spend their time being good. Good people want to spend their time mowing the lawn and playing with the dog. But bad people spend all their time being bad. It is all they think about.
Alan Furst / Author
Bad People
Dog
Good People
People
Thinking
Time Good Bad
Time Good People
Lawn
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Ambition
Work Good I Am
Delusions
Entertain
Escape
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I just became what I call an 'anti-fascist novelist.' There is no word that covers both the fascists and the Communists, which mean different things to people, but of course they're the same: they're tyranny states.
Alan Furst / Author
Different Things
Fascists
Tyranny
People Mean Things
Communists
Covers
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And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.
Alan Furst / Author
Army
Europe
Greek
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Brain Surgery
Surgeon
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Miles
One Morning
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I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.
Alan Furst / Author
Police State
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Upbringing
Obligations
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Contemporary
Novel
Spy
Amazingly
Derivative
Exactly
Gene
Hackman
Mysteries
Unbelievably
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Political History
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Genre
Hero
Love Work Always
Chase
Edge
In The End
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Afternoon
Makeup
Raised
Adored
Me See Who
Watched
Loved
Dressed
Partly
Whom
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I don't inflict horrors on readers. In my research, I've uncovered truly terrible documentations of cruelty and torture, but I leave that offstage. I always pull back and let the reader imagine the details. We all know to one degree or another the horrors of war.
Alan Furst / Author
Cruelty
Details
Imagine
Reader
Research
Terrible
Torture
Degree
Leave
Horrors
Inflict
Pull
Truly
Uncovered
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My father died when I was young, and my mother, Ruth, went to work in an office selling theater and movie parties. She put me through private school, Horace Mann, in Riverdale. She sent me to camp so that I would learn to compete. She was a lioness, and I was her cub.
Alan Furst / Author
Private School
Ruth
Selling
Work Mother Me
Work Me Father
Camp
Compete
Cub
Work Father Me
Parties
Sent
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Brutal
Dramatic
Particular
Poland
Tragic
Unbelievable
Considered
People Know Story
Germans
Survive
Wildly
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The only way you can handle big kinds of questions is to simply state briefly what the truth was. What am I going to tell you about the Holocaust? Would you like three pages about it? I don't think you would... I don't think anything different than you think - it was horrible.
Alan Furst / Author
Handle
Holocaust
Horrible
Pages
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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.
Alan Furst / Author
Britain
Evil
France
Hero
Reader
Good Always Hero
Believes
Betraying
Case
John
Right Side
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I was raised on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Something about this genre - hard-boiled-private-eye-with-heart-of-gold - never failed to take me away from whatever difficulties haunted my daily world to a wonderful land where I was no more than an enthralled spectator.
Alan Furst / Author
Genre
Raised
Series
Wonderful
World Me Never
Difficulties
Daily
Failed
Haunted
John
Macdonald
Spectator
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I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.
Alan Furst / Author
Biographies
Present Day
Time People Who
Afterwards
Autobiographies
Histories
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Alan Furst Quotes - Page 2

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