Alan Furst Quotes

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: 'There's no further new material; there are only new questions.'

As a historian, you can only go as far as the evidence will take you.

We need to read history from the source.

I would love to be an historian. I'm a bit of a history geek and love books and programmes on the subject.

Leave history to historians.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

I always use primary sources, in addition to reading biographies and other materials.

I've been reading a lot of books on history, and watching a lot of educational TV. Wikipedia too, even though it is not reliable.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources.

Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.

As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

History written today is much more accurate than history written in the 18th century.

I don't normally do pure historical work.

I do not start with a full knowledge of the facts; the whole attraction of writing history is to educate myself: it is an exploration into the unknown - 'a journey without maps,' to borrow Graham Greene's phrase.

With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events.

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.