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" I invented the historical spy novel. "
Alan Furst
Novel
Historical
Invented
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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
Seattle
Support
Me
" 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
Perfect
Brilliant
Voice
" I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything. "
Alan Furst
History
Write
Use
" When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality. "
Alan Furst
You
Move
Life Changes
" 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
Censorship
Forget
Serious
" 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
Angry
History
People
" Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy. "
Alan Furst
Darkness
Secrecy
Incredible
" People know accuracy when they read it; they can feel it. "
Alan Furst
Feel
People
Know
" If you can live in Paris, maybe you should. "
Alan Furst
Should
You
Live
" You write a lot of books; you hope you get better. "
Alan Furst
Get
Better
Write
" The best Paris I know now is in my head. "
Alan Furst
Now
Head
Paris
" I read very little contemporary anything. "
Alan Furst
Little
Contemporary
Anything
" I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer. "
Alan Furst
Eric
Genre
Reading
" 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
Country
Always
Kings
" I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer. "
Alan Furst
West
Jewish
Writer
" I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript. "
Alan Furst
Wrote
Books
Five
" 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
Time
People
Good
" You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic. "
Alan Furst
Heroic
You
Situations
" 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
Want
Books
Conservative
" 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
Same
Tyranny
Mean
" My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books. "
Alan Furst
Reality
You
Books
" I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It's an incredibly romantic and beautiful place. "
Alan Furst
Romantic
Beautiful
Love
" 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
Way
Surgeon
Plan
" Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that? "
Alan Furst
Wolves
Like
How