List of Ian Rankin Quotes

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.

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.

[about A Tiresome Colleague]: He Could Bore For Scotland.

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.

It Seemed To Him A Very Edinburgh Thing. Welcoming, But Not Very.

Right From The Very Beginning, I Knew I Wanted To Write Palpably Scottish Fiction.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

War Created Bizarre Allies, While Peace Itself Could Be Divisive.