33 Quotes by Ann Cleeves

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.

Television is much more collaborative in many ways than prose.

A writer loses possession of her work as soon as it's reaches its audience. Each reader brings his own experience and prejudice and imagination to the work. Television adaptation just goes one step further, and the novelist has to learn to let go.

You must never call it the Shetlands. Islanders are proud and can be prickly about the name: it's either Shetland or the Shetland Islands.

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 lived in Shetland for a short while in the seventies and have been visiting ever since, so I have lots of useful contacts!

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.

We don’t often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we’d miss them if they weren’t 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.