I don’t really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.
Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don’t tell them.
I write what I call ‘novels of consolation’ for people who are bright and sophisticated.
Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower – translated from a French saying.
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.
I don’t inflict horrors on readers.
If you’re a writer, you’re always working.
I invented the historical spy novel.
I’m basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.
But the world doesn’t run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. – Alan Furst; Red Gold.
When you are done living for yourself, only then do you learn that living for others is the privilege,’ Renata.
When you’re looking for somebody and you find yourself in contact with people you’ve never met, you are getting close.
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.
The sun?” Goldman said in an unguarded moment. “I hear they’ve shot it.
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.
Earlier, during a lull in business, Morath had laid out the details of Kolovitzky’s letter and the two of them had discussed strategy, coming up with the plan that couldn’t go wrong and what to do once it did. In.
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.