Alan Furst Quotes

I had no idea what to expect when I first started writing.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

Before Arthur, I'd dismissed altogether writing fiction. You only have so many semi-sharp arrows in your quiver, I'd told myself, and I was not going to be able to write a novel.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

I have been aspiring to write some sort of literature for a long time.

I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I've always been a writer.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

Sometimes writing has to be forced. In starting out, the shape and timbre and texture of what is to come is an uncertain chimera shimmering from behind a veil. You must not wait, loiter, dilly-dally. You must force your way painfully through.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.