I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

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.

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.

In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

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 grew up in Portugal, and people there party 'til 7 or 8 in the morning there.

Paradoxical as it may seem, God means not only to make us good, but to make us also happy, by sickness, disaster and disappointment.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.

It is said that the compensation for the effort courage, tenacity, and endurance displayed during the journey was not happiness. Nor glory. What God offered as a reward was only rest.

Any job that posts a price list for your body parts is a bad job.

By phonemic trans-formation into visual terms, the alphabet became a universal, abstract, static container of meaningless sounds.

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

I eat 230 grams of protein daily, 308 grams of carbohydrates, maybe 70 grams of fat. I can have one cheat meal a week but it can't be that I eat until I'm stuffed; I eat until I'm satisfied.