The best Paris I know now is in my head..

I invented the historical spy novel..

I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything..

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 t….

Live today, for tomorrow we die..

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

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should..

I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books - there are….

I read very little contemporary anything..

Good people don't spend their time being good. Good people want to spend their time mowing the lawn and playing with the dog. But bad people spend al….

My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books..

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that….

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer..

You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic..

The printing presses of the state treasuries cranked out reams of paper currency- showing wise kinds and blissful martyrs- while bankers wept and pea….

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended..

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them..

If you're a writer, you're always working..

I'm not really a mass market writer..

And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don'….