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

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

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

I'm basically an Upper West Side Jewish writer.

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's 160 days.

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 all their time being bad. It is all they think about.

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