Top 30 Ian Rankin Quotes

I wrote ‘Knots and Crosses,’ the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction.

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.

Being working class, my parents thought, ‘Ian’s going to uni, the first in the family,’ and I’d do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’ The only thing I was interested in was books and literature.

People aren’t coming to me looking for political essays or polemic – they’re looking for a rattling good story.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We’re still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

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.

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you’re dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings – and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

I wanted to be able to support myself without begging for handouts from the state. All of the writers I knew when I was a student were all getting grants from the Scottish Arts Council.

I’m often asked how I write books, but I don’t think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was ‘I tend to make it up as I go along.’ I’m not sure that’s brilliant advice.

In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we’re having exciting adventures all the time.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching – that way, you pick up new ideas.

My parents were working class and didn’t have much money, so holidays tended to be two weeks in a caravan at St. Andrews or a B&B in Blackpool.

My father worked in a grocery store. When the grocery chain went into administration, he eventually got a job in the naval dockyard in an office preparing the charts for the boats and the submarines before they headed out.

I dunno whether it was to do with my parents – we were working-class – but it was important to me to be self-sufficient.

When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize.

You need a great idea, but then you’ve got to carry it through. If you get it right, you’re going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there’s an element of luck.

The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It’s a country in love with crime fiction.

I’m not Rebus. We’re not the same. I don’t even think he’d like me if we met. He’d think I was a wishy-washy liberal.

I’m not qualified for anything. I’ve had lots of little jobs, like picking grapes and being a tax man. I can’t imagine not writing, because I’ve done it since I was five or six. Maybe I’d work in academia. That’s always what the plan was.

No matter how many awards you’ve won or how many sales you’ve got, come the next book it’s still a blank sheet of paper and you’re still panicking like hell that you’ve got nothing new to say.

Punk gave you a kind of chutzpah, so even trying to be a writer, I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to send poems to ‘Radio Times,’ short stories to the ‘Observer,’ just have a go.

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.

I grew up in a family that was working-class, which taught me to be careful with money.

I don’t have many friends. It’s not because I’m a misanthrope. It’s because I’m reserved. I’m self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I’m writing my books.

Writers always think their greatest work is just ahead of them.

I don’t want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops.

I don’t hang out with cops.

I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I’d think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, ‘No – it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.’

My mother worked in a school canteen – then worked in the canteen of a chicken factory. Every Friday, the pay packet money would be allocated to cover bills.

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.