140 Quotes by Alan Furst

In return for their faithful service, they would receive Red Army food rations, which amounted to a generous ladle, twice daily, from a cauldron into which all appropriated food was thrown. The stew boiled twenty-four hours a day, a fatty broth of onions, roosters, rabbits, dead horse, turnips - whatever they happened on in the course of their collecting forays - the Red Army essentially lived off the countryside.

There were moments when Szara suspected that many idealists drawn to Communism were, at heart, people with an appetite for clandestine life.

The earth is four-fifths water, that's a lot of room to hide, so the great trick of naval warfare has always been to find the enemy before he finds you. You're finished, if you can't do that, and all the courage and sacrifice in the world simply adds up to a lost war.

This year, of course, being 1936, there would be no figs.

Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said

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.

When you move a border, suddenly life changes violently. I write about nationality.

I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain.

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?