Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

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.

NOTE TO SELF – BOOMERANG EFFECTMy words, thoughts and deeds have a boomerang effect.So be-careful what you send out!

Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.

Jihad is nothing but making efforts to realise goodness in life.

Because of the internet and communications, the clash of cultures is much more direct. People feel, I think, less certain about their identity, less certain about economic security.

Computers make people stupid.

You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

I was the first one in the gym, and the last one to leave.

O God! I ask You for the means to do good, to avoid evil and to love the poor.

I was raised in South Alabama in the woods, y'know? I'm country.