Ann Cleeves Quotes

My work is less violent because we tend to write what we want to read ... and I'm not that interested in gruesome books. Any violence, to fit in well with a crime novel, has to have compassion.

In theory Vera liked strong women; in practice they often irritated her.

Shetland has always been a place of sanctuary for me. I visited when I dropped out of university, and I just loved it from the minute I got there. It's a bleak but very beautiful place.

Not unless he crossed the line.' Holly supposed she should let this go, but she was tired of Vera's bullying. 'Ah, that line . . .' Vera leaned back in her chair with her eyes half-closed. 'If only we knew exactly where it was.' There

It was precisely midnight when he stepped through the door. Taylor had said he wanted everyone in the Incident Room an hour before first light the next day, but Perez wasn't ready for sleep. As he switched on the kettle to make tea, he remembered he hadn't eaten since lunchtime and stuck sliced bread under the grill, fished margarine and marmalade from the fridge. He'd have breakfast now, save time in the morning.

I don't understand how anyone can write if they don't use public transport. I earwig all the time.

She'd learned that it was important when you were dealing with professional do-gooders to keep calm. Otherwise they judged you. Wrote things like anger-management problems in their reports.

Television is much more collaborative in many ways than prose.

They think of themselves as your grandparents,' he said. But call them whatever you like. James and Mary?

The best place for puffin watching is Sumburgh Head, at the south end of the Shetland mainland. There used to be a lighthouse there, but it's now a visitor centre and gallery; they run a webcam, so you can check on the puffins in advance.

I write traditional drama, and the small enclosed communities work well with this form. I enjoy exploring secrets. On small islands, privacy is important, and there are secrets that everyone can guess but nobody talks about.

Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she'd been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she'd be so bored she'd commit murder herself.

Was it only possible truly to enjoy something if you knew there was a danger that it might be taken away?

I especially don't like the graphic violence against women and children often depicted in novels such as 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and others. I'm not sure if it's being done just to entertain or whether it really is necessary for the characters involved.

Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.

Rather than the grey and dreary institutions of public perception, these should be places of innovation and experiment, where readers can take a chance on a book, pick one because they like the look of the cover or the title or because they see it returned by the gorgeous young man who lives in their street. After all, they will have absolutely nothing to lose. The book will be free.

the hugeness of the world was a pool to dive into, not somewhere to drown.

I'm aware families sit around the telly to watch 'Vera', which is making entertainment out of murder. But I don't enjoy reading about people's pain. I tend to put myself in that position, and it's not somewhere I want to be.

'Shetland' is adapted from the novel 'Red Bones.' The book is based around an archaeological dig, and the mystery starts with the murder of the elderly woman who crofts the land where the dig is happening.

His thoughts were wheeling and dipping like the gulls over the estuary, groping for an explanation, feeling at last he was making sense of what lie behind Walden's death...