Quotes from Alan Furst

I'm not really a mass market writer.

The only way you can handle big kinds of questions is to simply state briefly what the truth was. What am I going to tell you about the Holocaust? Would you like three pages about it? I don't think you would... I don't think anything different than you think - it was horrible.

The best Paris I know now is in my head.

Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.

I don't work Sunday any more... The Sabbath is a very reasonable idea. Otherwise, you work yourself to death.

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.

news—news which was withheld or slanted in Italy, where journalism had been defined, by law, as a supportive adjunct to national policy.

We learn, under occupation, that there's more rat in us than we knew.

The French would be outraged, but then, the French were habitually outraged.

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.

The low sky was oppressive, the color of ashes, as it would be for a long time

wired Sofia to find out what to do about him. Though the country was ruled by Czar Boris and his army officers and the future was clear to those with the stomach to see it, foreign policy was ephemeral, and it was hard to know where to put your foot. Russia might be characterized as a wicked beast of a nation, but it was a very

Communards died here, in 1871. They fought all night among the gravestones, then surrendered at dawn. The soldiers put them against this wall, shot them, and buried them in a common grave." "Are you a communist, Ilya? In your heart?" "Oh yes. Aren't you?" "No. I just want to live my life, to be left alone." There was a moment's silence, then Ilya said, "Now, a matter of some delicacy." They turned

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.

Lost souls, with nowhere to go, nursed their coffees and read old newspapers they'd found left on the benches.

Jesus, the world's a slaughterhouse. Really it is. If you're weak they're going to cut your throat—ask the Armenians, ask the Jews. The bad people want it their way, my friend. And how badly they want it is the study of a lifetime.

What has become of the adventures of the heart? Killed by the dark adventures of existence. ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

Luftmenschen were also eternal students, lost souls, young people who spent their lives arguing politics in cafés and drifting through the student communities of Europe— gifted, bright, but never truly finding themselves.

a bright sun, white wisps of cirrus cloud strung across the sky

It made her—a bizarre trick—long for a past that was still in the future.

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

wainscoting

then, suddenly, and for no reason he could think of, he was very conscious of the life around him, the Parisian chatter and laughter that filled the smoky air of the restaurant. A strange awareness; not enjoyment, more apprehension. Like the dogs, he thought. Sometimes, at rest, they would raise their heads, alert to something distant, then, after a moment, lie back down again, always with a kind of sigh. What would happen to these people, he wondered, if war came here?

He didn't sing the language the way the French did, enjoying every word.