Alan Furst

“It was dawn by the time the detective showed up; tired and weary. Tired because he’d been called from his bed before…

— Alan Furst

“Luftmenschen were also eternal students, lost souls, young people who spent their lives arguing politics in cafés and drifting through the student…

— Alan Furst

Live today, for tomorrow we die.

— Alan Furst

“There's a French saying, ‘Où le Dieu a vous semé, il faut savoir fleurir.’ Let's see, ‘Wherever God has planted you, you…

— Alan Furst

I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had…

— Alan Furst

“Home at that moment was a starless night, a steady wind, not a human to be seen.”

— Alan Furst

“when at last they’d had to admit to themselves that they’d made all the love they could, had been a last meal.…

— Alan Furst

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

— Alan Furst

“This year, of course, being 1936, there would be no figs.”

— Alan Furst

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do…

— Alan Furst

Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually…

— Alan Furst

I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never…

— Alan Furst

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

— Alan Furst

“When a diplomat says ‘yes’ he means ‘maybe.’ When a diplomat says ‘maybe’ he means ‘no.’ But if a diplomat says ‘no’…

— Alan Furst

My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.

— Alan Furst

“In return for their faithful service, they would receive Red Army food rations, which amounted to a generous ladle, twice daily, from…

— Alan Furst

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

— Alan Furst

“crossed borders like the wind. Yet it had happened, and Khristo finally understood how it had happened. Moving across the countryside made…

— Alan Furst

“But the world doesn't run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. - Alan Furst; Red Gold”

— Alan Furst

And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what…

— Alan Furst

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.

— Alan Furst

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

— Alan Furst

I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect…

— Alan Furst

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

— Alan Furst

“This land, like so much of the French countryside, was a painting, but Mercier felt his heart touched with melancholy and realized,…

— Alan Furst