Alan Furst

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.

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.

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.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

In novelas, sometimes you get the most ridiculous situations, but you make the best of it. But novelas are a very special genre.

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.