Quotes from Alan Furst

The sun? Goldman said in an unguarded moment. I hear they've shot it.

Well, he thought, one did what one had to do, so life went. No, one did what one had to do in order to do what one wanted to do - so life really went.

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.

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.

The lawyer Thien, when Morath was ushered into his office by a junior member of the staff, turned out to be an ancient bag of bones held upright only by means of a stiff, iron-coloured suit.

Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

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.

We are afflicted with a darkness of the soul and fall in love with our pain.

With time, he developed the instincts of a priest: evil existed; the task was to work productively within its confines.

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.

They had refused payment, their spying was an act of conscience. Sincere Christians, German Lutherans, they had watched with horror as the Nazis violated every precept sacred to them. .... They didn't care to be paid. They had prayed together for hours, they explained, down on their knees, trying to make this decision, but now it was made. The people who led Germany were evil, and they were obliged, by their faith, to act against them.

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.

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.

My father died when I was young, and my mother, Ruth, went to work in an office selling theater and movie parties. She put me through private school, Horace Mann, in Riverdale. She sent me to camp so that I would learn to compete. She was a lioness, and I was her cub.

I figured I would always be a candidate for man of the year in the virtue-is-its-own-reward category. What that did was force me to concentrate on the work.

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries.

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

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 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.

Poland is a wildly dramatic and tragic story. It's just unbelievable what went on with those people. How they survive, I don't really know. The Germans had a particular hatred for the Poles; they really considered them subhuman Slavs, and they were very brutal to them.

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.

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

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?

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.