Furst Quotes & Sayings

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended. — Alan Furst

I wrote out little mysteries in longhand, and my mother typed them out on an old Remington. — Alan Furst

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

I also have a degree in marriage, family and child counseling - I'm a therapist. — Stephen Furst

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying — Alan Furst

A fat man with a Nazi party pin in his lapel played Cole Porter on a white piano. — Alan Furst

Live today, for tomorrow we die. — Alan Furst

He was, in military life, a sergeant. Casson had already guessed that by the time he got around to mentioning it. A sergeant: good at getting things done. By the book so long as it worked. By being crooked if that's what it took. — Alan Furst

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

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

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

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

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

I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It's an incredibly romantic and beautiful place. — Alan Furst

I'll make a diet cheesecake, but I'll put it in a Sara Lee box. Or I'll have a huge bowl of pasta, but it's actually just a cup of pasta - the rest is vegetables. It makes me feel less deprived. — Stephen Furst

We're the blue line, sir, and that will resonate on-screen. But Peabody is the face, the very human element. And she would symbolize who we are, contrast sharply against what Renee Oberman is."
He rubbed his chin, and his lips curved a little above his fingers. "You can carve out an angle like that, an excellent angle, and believe the idea of your ass in the chair someday down the road is terrifying?" He waved off her response before she could make it. "I should have thought of it myself, should have thought it through exactly that way. I'll contact Furst."
Something inside her unknotted. "Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me. I'm wondering why I haven't assigned you to Media and PR."
"Because, sir, I hope I've done nothing to deserve that kind of punishment. — J.D. Robb

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

Fast-paced from start to finish, 'The Honourable Schoolboy' is fired by le Carre's conviction regarding evil done and its consequences. — Alan Furst

French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is. — Alan Furst

When we sit in meditation, we are closer than usual to the world as it is. By simply bringing body, breath, and mind together in the present moment, we touch Buddha; we touch reality, and we are in the world as it is. Most people's experience in this state is peaceful and rejuvenating. — Andrew Furst

I was going to be the best failed novelist in Paris. That was certainly not the worst thing in the world that one could be. — Alan Furst

The earth is four-fifths water, that's a lot of room to hide, so the great trick of naval warfare has always been to find the enemy before he finds you. You're finished, if you can't do that, and all the courage and sacrifice in the world simply adds up to a lost war. — Alan Furst

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

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

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

I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything. — Alan Furst

If you're a writer, you're always working. — 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 dawn, weary because he'd spent his life looking at the bad side of human nature and that wasn't going to change. — Alan Furst

Indeed, there is something to learn from the openness of children. The immediacy of their pleasure and their emotional authenticity reveals a certain purity that's lacking in adults. — Andrew Furst

I remember I made $22 a week doing dinner theater in Norfolk, Virginia. Back then, in the '70s, that was pretty good for a teenager, for a part-time job. — Stephen Furst

I was as you are now. A peasant. I sought the world. Because the alternative was to spend the rest of my life looking up a plowhorse's backside. — Alan Furst

Eric Roberts, for all the criticism he gets, is at least having fun with the script. His decision to devour large swaths of scenery locate him firmly in the tradition of Graham Crowden and Joseph Furst. Which is to say that he's not destined for fan acclaim, but he's easy to like if you're of the mind to. — Phillip Sandifer

I finally admitted that obesity and diabetes were part of a life-threatening legacy - and I had to deal with that reality or die. — Stephen Furst

The first time I ever did a play, in junior high school, I said to myself, 'Hey, people like me doing this. I'm making them laugh.' — Stephen Furst

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

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

For me, Anthony Powell is a religion. I read 'A Dance to the Music of Time' every few years. — Alan Furst

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

The way to deal with the devil of obesity and diabetes is literally one day at a time. — Stephen Furst

pajamas. He stumbled a little, the two men jerked him upright and his glasses went askew. They stopped at the back of the Stolypin car, and one of the men let him go in order to open the door. Instinctively, he adjusted his glasses. Turned his head. For a bare instant, he stared at Khristo. His face appeared to have somehow shrunk, and his eyes looked enormous. Then the two — Alan Furst

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

I went to high school in Virginia Beach, Va., and we had these guys - they were surfers. They didn't like me, never talked to me. And if they didn't like you, they threw toothpicks at you. After I did a play, it was different. I found out I was pretty good at something. — Stephen Furst

At least, he thought, looking down at his feet, his socks were still in decent shape. It was the socks that went first. A whore he knew said that she only took customers whose socks were in good condition. One of Casson's fellow lodgers showed him how he used a pen to color in the skin that showed white in the holes. — Alan Furst

I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II. — Alan Furst

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

I had a great childhood, a very close-knit family. We were all overweight, and we had good times eating together, I imagine. — Stephen Furst

I could not spend the rest of my life sitting in Brazil writing down who called whom uncle and aunt. — Alan Furst

Home at that moment was a starless night, a steady wind, not a human to be seen. — Alan Furst

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

when at last they'd had to admit to themselves that they'd made all the love they could, had been a last meal. Like — Alan Furst

I tell people I'm on a diet. If somebody sees me with a muffin, they'll think I'm off my diet. It's like secret little police that I've made for myself. — Stephen Furst

spies and journalists were fated to go through life together, and it was sometimes hard to tell one from the other. Their jobs weren't all that different: they talked to politicians, developed sources in government bureaux, and dug around for secrets. — Alan Furst

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

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

If we are looking to employ logic to infer a deity, we fall into absurdity. — Andrew Furst

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

... as I said; the Nazi party was built on ruined lives - a failed career, the bitterness that feeds on injustice, redemption promised by a radical political movement. — Alan Furst

crossed borders like the wind. Yet it had happened, and Khristo finally understood how it had happened. Moving across the countryside made one prey, over time, to a series of small mishaps, none of them serious in and of itself, but cumulative over time. A few hours of sleep when one could manage it, a meal now and then, the insidious chill of the early spring, the constant forcing of the mind into a state of vigilance when all one craved was numbness, when not to think about anything seemed the most exquisite luxury the world had to offer. — Alan Furst

I would have loved to have another 10 Eric Ambler books. — Alan Furst

A moment comes, and if you wish to look at yourself as human, you must take some kind of action. Otherwise, you can read the newspapers and congratulate yourself on your good fortune. — Alan Furst

Separating the God question from Buddhism does not make Buddhists atheists - within silence lies mystery. That doesn't mean, however, we should infer from this acknowledgement of the mystery a nod one way or another on the matter of the divine. — Andrew Furst

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

There were moments when Szara suspected that many idealists drawn to Communism were, at heart, people with an appetite for clandestine life. — Alan Furst

Russia might be characterized as a wicked beast of a nation, but it was a very large beast, and sometimes it thrashed its tail. — Alan Furst

The first thing I did on my diet was take the batteries out of the remote control and make myself get up and change the channel. That's probably the hardest exercise I did. — Stephen Furst

I invented the historical spy novel. — Alan Furst

Like most severely overweight people, I had to hit a rock-hard bottom before I'd take responsibility for the consequences of neglecting my own health. — Stephen Furst

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

When you left this one theater in Norfolk, the actors had to walk through the lobby to get out to the street. People would see you and say nice things, tell you that you were good. So, pretty soon I'm pretending to forget things backstage, going through the lobby a couple of times. — Stephen Furst

When a diplomat says 'yes' he means 'maybe.' When a diplomat says 'maybe' he means 'no.' But if a diplomat says 'no' he's no diplomat. — Alan Furst

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

It was a great softening, night and day it continued, a water funeral for the dying winter. — 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 been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past. — Alan Furst

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

One of the key things I did to stay on my diet is I never allowed myself to get hungry. As soon as I got hungry, I'd eat healthy foods. — Stephen Furst

He'd grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding, and prayed for those he'd lost, for those he loved, and an end to evil in the world. — Alan Furst

People know accuracy when they read it; they can feel it. — Alan Furst

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. — Alan Furst

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

I didn't get a Bachelor's degree - I got a Bachelor's of Fine Arts, which means I didn't have to take humanities, math, and stuff like that. I think I had to take Art History, which I failed a few times. — Stephen Furst

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

Fascism is a revolutionary force, it wants to destroy the established order and take its place - take its money, its businesses, everything it has because, to these people, the governing class in Europe is hesitant, ineffective, effete. So, destroy it. — Alan Furst

When I was a child, I used to eat sugar Frosted Flakes with chocolate milk, but I digest, I mean digress. — Stephen Furst

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

When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality. — Alan Furst

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

I read very little contemporary anything. — Alan Furst

I love the combination of the words 'spies' and 'Balkans.' It's like meat and potatoes. — Alan Furst

I'm one of the most insecure people in the world, always have been, and when you're a fat kid, you try to make the fat jokes before other people make them. — Stephen Furst

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

When you are done living for yourself, only then do you learn that living for others is the privilege,' Renata — Alan Furst

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

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

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

Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.
I fot Id bettir clear it wif thi relevint oforities furst & hens avoyd any truble (like happind thi lastime) so I went 2 c mentor Scalopin.
Certinly yung Bascule, he sez, i do beleave this is a day ov relativly lite dooties 4 u u may take it off. ½ u made yoor mattins calls?
O yes, I sed, which woznt stricktly tru, in fact which woz pretti strikly untru, trufe btold, but I cude always do them while we woz travelin. — Iain M. Banks

Whether they loved each other or not, they were lovers. And he was damned if he'd see her sucked into this brutal business. — Alan Furst

A certain type - he knew them all too well from years of experience as a detective, he knew how they acted, how they spoke, how their minds worked. These were people who would do anything to win at what they saw as the game of life, who had no allegiance to anyone or anything beyond themselves, who were gifted liars, who could scheme their way into almost anyone's confidence, then betray them without hesitation. — 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 came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow. — Alan Furst

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

Romantic love, or sex, is the only good thing in a life that is being lived in a dark way. — Alan Furst