Val McDermid Quotes

The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense comes from.

No. It's no the same. The interviewers want you to say what they want to hear. I want to hear what you have to say.

It's not magic that takes us to another world - it's storytelling.

I'm telling you the truth, Carol. Even though it's actually none of your business.'
She half turned, found a smile from somewhere and said, 'You're quite right. It is none of my business. Till tomorrow Tony.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence and medicine power' Romeo and Juliet, II, iii

You are Tadeusz Radecki? I am in the right place?' 'I know who I am. What I want to know is who you are.

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales.

Look at you. Finally, you look upset. Is that what's bothering you now?' She stepped close to him and pushed him hard in the chest, making him stumble backwards. 'The fact that you didn't predict this? Didn't work it out? That you're not as smart as you thought you were? the great Tony Hill fucked up and now my brother's dead?' She pushed him again and he had to twist away to avoid falling down the stairs.

It forced me to realise that I'd been blaming you for not being flawless. And none of us is flawless.' Another sigh. 'I was so angry with myself for what happened to Michael and Lucy that I had to turn my anger somewhere else and you were the easiest target.

No two bodies will decompose in the same way, and at the same rate. You can have two bodies that are literally six feet apart and they will decompose in entirely different manners. It could be the amount of fat on the body. It could be the drugs they were taking, or the medication. It could be the type of clothing they're wearing. It could be that one has a particular odour that is more attractive to flies than the other. Absolutely anything.

I am the despair of my accountant; I am the plastic bags of receipts.

They both possessed a victimhood that had been conferred because they'd both been guilty of being female in a world where some men believed they deserved never to feel powerless.

You've always been handy with a knife, Mother

Tony got up from his desk and crouched down beside her. She was instantly aware of the smell of him, a mixture of shampoo and his own fain, animal scent.

It was a lot easier to be optimistic about equality when you didn't have to confront the Neanderthals on a daily basis. When you could imagine that people were actually changing their minds because they'd stopped groping secretaries at the photocopier.

Father, everybody has mugs these days. It's not a sign of debauchery and disrepute to drink tea from a mug.

I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.

Her anger was a memory now. She didn't believe in bearing grudges.
She believed in killing them where they lay.

I'd like to be more spontaneous.

As Richard has pointed out on several occasions, I subscribe to the irregular verb theory of life: I am a trained investigator, you have a healthy curiosity, she/he is a nosy parker.

He looked so vulnerable and fallible, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol's impulses overrode the decision she'd taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and pulled Tony into a tight hug. 'If anyone can do it, you can,' she whispered against his chin like a cat marking its territory.

I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.

The bodies of two murdered women have been found this week. For the record, I didn't kill either of them.

If only this mist would clear, it would be a lovely day," she said faintly.
"And if only the clouds would thicken up it would be a miserable day," Mr. Allen contributed from behind the paper. "It is what it is.

We all make mistakes, Carol. Sometimes they're more expensive than others. But I don't deserve to lose you,' he said, spreading his hands in appeal.

Without work, without direction, his thoughts were like a hamster on a wheel, circling and dancing with no destination and no possibility of arrival. With

The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it

On one hand, you've got 'decent' men, and on the other you've got neanderthal misogynist bawbags - and the middle ground is what's disappearing.

It was a source of constant disappointment to Catherine Morland that her life did not more closely resemble her books. Or rather, that the books in which she found its likeness were so unexciting.

Attractive smile, Carol added to her list of particulars as she shook the hand.

No woman is a heroine to her dentist.

A society gets the criminals it deserves.

There is still a funny notion that women should not write violent fiction.

Time for the likeliest story since Mary told Joseph it was God's.

We make high demands on the people we expect to deliver justice, and we don't always appreciate how much it eats away at them.

Patsy McDonald had the artificial brightness and dead eyes that go hand in hand with prescription antidepressants. They

A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn't diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives.

Walking by water frees your creativity. I don't know how it works - there's something about it that's liberating.

You know, I've often wondered. It's pretty clear what they were up to in Sodom, but what do you suppose the sin of Gomorrah was?' Carol asked.

I think that crime is a good vehicle for looking at society in general because the nature of the crime novel means that you draw on a wide group of social possibilities.

I've never wanted to live in a ghetto or write in a ghetto. I want to write about a world that reflects the one most people live in. Gay people are just one aspect of that.

I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.

She'd cook like an angel and fuck like a whore

The discipline is based on one grisly fact: a corpse makes a good lunch.

I told her you were probably here'. 'Thanks,' Tony said. 'Did I mention she thinks her brother's murder is my fault?

I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time.

He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. 'Well, I'm not a cop. And I'm not a woman.' She couldn't resist. 'I had noticed.

I failed her. And she's out of my life. I don't even know where she's living. What she's doing to get through the days. And I miss her. Every single day, I miss her.

The nurse looked surprised. 'You're a bit high on the totem pole to be taking statements.' Carol debated momentarily how to describe her relationship with Tony. 'Colleague' was insufficient, 'landlord' somehow misleading and 'friend' both more and less than the truth. She shrugged. 'He feeds my cat.

Around five-eight, slim, good shoulders, narrow hips, legs and trunk in proportion, short dark hair, side parting, dark eyes, probably blue, shadows under the eyes, fair skin, average nose, wide mouth, lower lip fuller than upper.

When all else fails, go for the ego.

I came from a working-class family, but I was supported by a grant system and had my fees paid, so I came out of Oxford with a debt of something like £200.

It seems to me that one of the things that happened with a lot of literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was that it became very concerned with the academy and less with how people live their lives. We got to a point where the crime novel stepped into the breach. It was also a time when the crime novel stopped being so metropolitan.

We all present versions of ourselves. The person you are at work is not the same person you are at home. The face we present in our most intimate relationships is not the face we present to the world.

Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn't feel like a freak.

It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer.

It's only hunting you that keeps me from being you.

I did want to be Joni Mitchell for quite a long time.

Everybody seemed to like Skype except him, Tony thought, closing his office door then settling in front of his screen. His dislike was both personal and professional. Everybody looked weird on Skype. Everyone, frankly, looked like a potential patient. There was something very unsettling about that fish-eyed stare. Even people he liked looked deranged. From a professional perspective, the trouble was you could never see enough of the person you were in conversation with to gauge their body language. They might be giving off all sort of signals you'd be aware of in what his boss had taken to calling "F2F encounters," but the Skype interface could hide a multitude of clues.

Sometimes, the only things that make you feel good are the same ones that worked when you were five. Yes, I slammed the door

He knew he could devastate her and drive her from him with a handful of well-chosen sentences. And part of him wanted to do just that. Part of him wanted to banish her and her presumptions from his life. He'd travel further and faster and lighter without her. Then an appalling thought battled through his anger. You sound just like Vanessa.

You always remember the first time. Isn't that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder.

If you want to last more than five minutes as a private investigator, you've got to have the instincts of a chameleon. Gumshoes that stand out in the crowd are as much use to the client as a chocolate chip pan.

It was a bit unimaginable when I began that I'd ever get to 25 books. But it was also unimaginable how much crime-writing would have changed.

You take the lead. He'll open up more easily to a copper than a mumbo jumbo man

It's your fault because you got me into Morag Fraser. I'd never even heard of the Hebridean Harpies series till you dragged me along to her event. And now I am totally hooked. I was reading Vampires on Vatersay till one in the morning. I just had to finish it. And then I started Banshees of Berneray at breakfast and I could hardly drag myself away from it to come and meet you.

Why are you only coming home just after three? Do you want a drink? I'm wide awake now.'
He could be so like a small child, she thought. Out of nowhere, all eagerness and curiosity.

You can't prove a negative. I can't prove there are no such thing as vampires any more than you can prove you're not a lesbian.