Alan Furst Quotes

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

My experience of fiction was, in the beginning, so exploratory. I wasn't sitting down to a desk at Yaddo with a month, thinking I have to have a draft of a novel.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

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

I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

When people find out that I've written 208 novels, they ask, 'How did you think of all that?' Well, I answer, 'How do you not think of it?' I see a gum wrapper on the ground, and I think, 'Oh, a Russian spy probably dropped that.' I just think like that, and those thoughts go through my mind constantly.

The bane of my existence is the synopses that publishers request for a new novel or series. That's where I'm really producing fiction - my final book never ends up looking like the synopsis.

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

I'm always writing. There is always a story brewing in my head.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?'

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.

I love doing the research for the novels. For me, the writing is hard work.

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I'm writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.

I didn't really start to write until I was almost 30, and I started with the short stories.

Rarely does a complete idea come to me. I basically start with just a small scene or a snatch of dialogue and force myself to write and to keep writing. Sometimes it becomes a book.

I don't feel tentative when I start to write. I've usually thought about a novel or novella for several years and created a lot of juice and density and energy by that time so by the time I get ready to go, I just let 'er fling, you know.

If somebody says that they want to write a book but do not know what to write about, they will never write a book.

The thing about stories is that they almost always find their way onto the page, even if it takes a while.