Literary Birthday – 20 February – Alan Furst

Seven Quotes

1. Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
2. If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.
3. I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
4. You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.
5. I write in a 1937 garage on my property in Sag Harbor, I installed an old brick floor and had the doors replaced with old wooden boards. There are French doors out to an old brick terrace with a garden. I write on a Lexus Wheelwriter, a descendant of the magnificent and much missed IBM Selectric.
6. If you’re a writer, you’re always working.
7. One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.
8. Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said.
9. I invented the historical spy novel.

Alan Furst is an American author of historical spy novels. He is best known for the Night Soldiers series of novels, which have been translated into eighteen languages. Visit his website.

by Amanda Patterson

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