Best 40 quotes of Ian Rankin on MyQuotes

[About a tiresome colleague]: He could bore for Scotland.

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.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas.

From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The volcanic plug might be black Plasticine, the castle balanced solidly atop it a skewed rendition of crenellated building bricks. The orange street lamps are crumpled toffee-wrappers glued to lollipop sticks.

His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life.

I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up.

I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.

I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry.

I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?

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.

I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book hopefully adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation's politics, economy, psyche and history ... and perhaps pointing towards its possible future.

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

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.

I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience.

It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.

I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.

I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a spy story, a space story and a football story.

I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

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.

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.

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

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

Was it all inevitable, John?" Reeve was pushing his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress. Yes," I said. "I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.

Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.

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.

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

At the time, most bodies worked on by anatomists were cold indeed. They were brought to Edinburgh from all over Britain -- some came by way of the Union Canal. The resurrectionists -- body-snatchers -- pickled them in whisky for transportation. It was a lucrative trade." "But did the whisky get drunk afterwards?" Devlin chuckled. "Economics would dictate that it did.

Chialer, c'était bon quand on perdait au foot, qu'on vous racontait des histoires d'animaux héroïques, ou en entendant "Flower of Scotland" après l'heure de fermeture.

Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and resilience to all but the most terminal of life's tragedies.

My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn't know what he was doing." "You mean you went to an expensive school?

Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole game was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she’d want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie.

Sometimes I think we're all gentlemen of the road. It's just that most of us haven't got the courage to take that first step.

That was the problem with having money: you ended up with decisions to make. And if you bought anything, where would you put it? He'd need either ditch something, or to start on another carrier bag. That was the problem, being Frank.

This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.

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

Wars were connected by arms manufacturers, the same arms manufacturers who made the guns used in robberies, who made the guns used by crazy people in America when they when on the rampage in a shopping centre or hamburger restaurant. So already you had connection between hamburgers and dictators. Start from there and the thing just grew and grew.

What happens to sanity when you chain it to a wall?

You double bolted your door against the psychopath with the chainsaw, only to be stabbed in the back by your lover, husband, son or neighbour.