Top 96 Quotes by Alan Furst

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.

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.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.

Women take great care of themselves in France. It's a culture dedicated to making women beautiful and to manners.

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.

I love the gray areas, but I like the gray areas as considered by bright, educated, courageous people.

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.

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.

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.

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.