American - Author | February 20, 1941 -
The brutalization of humans by other humans never fails to get to me in some angry-making way. It shot up in me like an explosion.
Alan Furst
MeWayNeverUpGetLike
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.
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I've always liked lost, old New York.
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I never wanted to be a Cold War novelist.
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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.
GoodHeroEvilYouBackKind
Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.
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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.
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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.
WorkHistoryPeopleLearnPolitical
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.
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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.
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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.
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When I went to prep school in New York City, I had to ride the subway and learned how to do homework on the train. I can work and read through anything.
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