Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When one historical period is replaced by another, there is always a group of people left over from the old society
I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world.
That's why I think the 'Scarpetta' series has worked so well because people like spending time with this character.
I always say that bad women are fewer than men, but when you get one, they're fascinating because they're so rotten.
Why does any novelist keep writing long after they've made money? Because they've failed to write the perfect novel.
I would have loved to have been a rock n' roll star. But none of us was musical, and none of us had any instruments.
I have come to think of violence as a self-perpetuating mania of the power of the aggressive over those less strong.
I'm not Rebus. We're not the same. I don't even think he'd like me if we met. He'd think I was a wishy-washy liberal.
I tend to watch a lot of movies at home. It's nice to be close to the refrigerator with my pyjamas on and just relax.
I didn't invent forensic science and medicine. I just was one of the first people to recognize how interesting it is.
'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.
I was a university professor, I could talk on and on and on. Give me a podium and you have to drag me off with a hook.
College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.
I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.
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've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.
I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!
That's the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected, and inconvenient, times but it's set in stone.
I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.
In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S.
All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.
But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.
I got a woman I'm loyal to above all things, above my career. She's profound to me. I'm quiet. I live in Kansas City. I work.
Murder is about power and the more powerful women get the more it will change the good that they do and the bad that they do.
Today he wore a burnt-orange shirt, black pants, and a tie that looked like a street fight at the south end of the color wheel.
Ben locked his eyes on mine for a long moment. Then, “How?” “How do you think?” I smiled, then slapped him full across the face
If everybody, every day, would try to do one thing that pulls them beyond themselves the world will start being a better place.
I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.
I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.
You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman.
I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.
Both our opinions are rooted in our experience," I said. "Both of them are true, it's just that we've had different experiences.
Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there.
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.
Justice doesn't only mean that the people who commit crime are punished. It also means that we can never give up seeking the truth.
In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted.
I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.
Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.
Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom.
I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary!
Rebus was eating breakfast in the canteen and wishing there was more caffeine in the coffee, or more coffee in the coffee come to that.
I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.
I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers.
I love Sherlock Holmes. There's still an awful lot to steal from Conan Doyle. But within a tradition you can work in many different ways.
It's all chaos and the house is occasionally filthy but I get to stand at the school gates. Writers are so lucky to have that flexibility.
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.
Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.
I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.