98 Quotes by Denise Mina

We don’t really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It’s a cultural thing, so maybe we don’t need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn’t as nice here so there’s no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that’s stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

Usually when I’m trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

Julia saw the awe on my face. She recognised it. She pouted and graced me with a small, wry smile, then dropped her eyes and turned away as if to say, yes, here I am. I am a peerless pearl who has fallen from her setting. I have rolled into the dust under a couch and been forgotten. But, if you can see past the dust and the gloom, you will see that I am still a pearl.

I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it’s more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

There’s a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

If Morrow worked with herself she’d try and sit a few desks away.

Novelisation doesn’t imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.

I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn’t realise political writing could be so funny.