A biography for Alan Fursthasn’t been written yet.
“In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.”
“I invented the historical spy novel.”
“When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.”
“I never wanted to be a Cold War novelist.”
“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.”
“I would have loved to have another 10 Eric Ambler books.”
“I had the experience of a monk copying documents, applying myself assiduously to my work. And I thought whatever happened, happened - this is just what I do in my life.”
“I started writing in my 20s. I just wanted to write, but I didn't have anything to write about, so in the beginning, I wrote entertainments - mainly murder mysteries.”
“I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.”
“I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.”
“Whether they loved each other or not, they were lovers. And he was damned if he'd see her sucked into this brutal business.”
“Romantic love, or sex, is the only good thing in a life that is being lived in a dark way.”
“I don't work Sunday any more... The Sabbath is a very reasonable idea. Otherwise, you work yourself to death.”
“If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.”
“If you're a writer, you're always working.”
“I was raised on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Something about this genre - hard-boiled-private-eye-with-heart-of-gold - never failed to take me away from whatever difficulties haunted my daily world to a wonderful land where I was no more than an enthralled spectator.”
“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.”
“Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best.”
“I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.”
“If I'm a genre writer, I'm at the edge. In the end, they do work like genre fiction. You have a hero, there's a love interest, there's always a chase, there's fighting of some kind. You don't have to do that in a novel. But you do in a genre novel.”