My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.

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.

Maddie swallowed hard and tried to channel… which actress? Damn, she couldn’t think of anactress to save her life! She was on her own.

[We're] going to change the world. One day they'll write about us. You'll see.

The most important thing to leverage is people. Their talents and connections will take you to great heights.

Julie Seagle: I would never in a million years go skydiving.Finn is God: What if I took you?

Work and love - these are the basics waking life is a dream controlled.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

A good man fights for himself. A great man fights for everyone else

I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality.

Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.