Alan Furst

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way. ”

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 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. ”

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. ”

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days. ”

Moscow had this incredible, intense atmosphere of intrigue and darkness and secrecy. ”

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. ”