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

If you can live in Paris, maybe you should.

I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

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

I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.