Martha Grimes

“I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.”

“My black cat was named Blackie.”

“I have readers tell me that I must be bored, but that's not true. I am never bored with the characters. I like them.”

“Before you hate something you should try to understand it.”

“When you write the first book of a series, you do have to be careful what you put in because then you are stuck with it.”

“I do Q&As, not readings.”

“I don't think I could have just kept writing the 'Richard Jury' books. It wasn't that I was bored or dissatisfied. I just had to write something else.”

“I'll see something or hear something. Sometimes, it can be a color. Or a piece of music. Or an image of some kind. I see something, and it has huge emotional weight, although I have no idea why.”

“I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character, to a particular atmosphere or setting. But most mystery writers, I think, are controlled by the plot.”

“In Baltimore, I was walking with a friend who was playing at a pub he kept referring to as the Horse. But when I saw the sign 'The Horse You Came In On' - I thought, 'My God.' I had no intention of ever setting a Jury novel in the U.S., but when I saw that, I thought, 'That's it.' The names are very important.”

“The England I write about doesn't strike me as the real one.”

“I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.”

“There are people who read Tolstoy or Dostoevski who do not insist that their endings be happy or pleasant or, at least, not be depressing. But if you're writing mysteries - oh, no, you can't have an ending like that. It must be tidy.”

“I don't have to hang around a pub, really, to get an idea. I usually visit it once, get the layout, the atmosphere, the feel of it.”

“Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.”

“Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.”

“If a cone had dropped on velvet needles, if a star had lain a silver track across the sky, if the dead had turned in their graves - I swear, I would have heard it, that's how silent it all was.”