Alan Furst Time Quotations

For me, Anthony Powell is a religion. I read 'A Dance to the Music of Time' every few years.

For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.

I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II.

I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.

The 1930s was a funny time. People knew they might not live for another six months, so if they were attracted to one another, there was no time to dawdle.

We're the roughest people in the way we play and live, and that is because Americans come from people who all got up one morning and went 5,000 miles, and that was a time in the 19th century when it wasn't so easy to do.

Yes, I'm a reasonably good self-taught historian of the 1930s and '40s. I've never wanted to write about another time or place. I wouldn't know what to say about contemporary society.