33 Quotes by Ann Cleeves

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...

And miles to go before I sleep . . .

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.

Shetland's influences are far more Scandinavian than Celtic.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.