Ian Rankin

“I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.”

“You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.”

“...trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.”

“Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.”

“War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.”

“In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.”

“You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck.”

“Being working class, my parents thought, 'Ian's going to uni, the first in the family,' and I'd do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, 'Why am I doing this?' The only thing I was interested in was books and literature.”

“No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.”

“I don't want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops.”

“When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize.”

“In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S.”

“Punk gave you a kind of chutzpah, so even trying to be a writer, I just thought, 'Well, I'm going to send poems to 'Radio Times,' short stories to the 'Observer,' just have a go.”

“I dunno whether it was to do with my parents - we were working-class - but it was important to me to be self-sufficient.”

“I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.”

“'Jekyll and Hyde' I read in high school. I was expecting a Hollywood-type horror story and couldn't believe it when I got this very complex narrative from all these different points of view.”

“I'm not qualified for anything. I've had lots of little jobs, like picking grapes and being a tax man. I can't imagine not writing, because I've done it since I was five or six. Maybe I'd work in academia. That's always what the plan was.”

“I have a strong work ethic, yet I'm incredibly lazy as well. The problem with being a writer is that everything you do can be called research. Sitting in the pub is research. Reading the newspaper can be research.”

“A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up with. You've got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I'm not like that and I've realised that I don't need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not.”

“I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story.”