72 Quotes by Mark Billingham

Life isn’t fair. Fair is somewhere you go to ride the dodgems and win a goldfish. (from Rush of Blood)

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.

Whether you do stand-up comedy or write a story, you have a duty to deliver. As a comedian, you walk out on stage, and you have a minute to hook them, or they'll start booing. As a writer, it's very similar. A reader doesn't have time to say, 'I'll give him 50 pages, as it's not very good yet, but I hope it'll get better.'

Whenever people ask where I get my sick and twisted ideas from, I reply, 'Just open your eyes.'

The fact is that most crime novels contain a good many punchlines. They are just rather darker than the ones you might hear in a comedy club.

When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.

Of course there's pressure, and it's still there with every book. Each one is harder to write than the last, basically because you're always trying to write a better book. You won't always succeed, of course, but that has to be what you're shooting for.

My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.

More than 100 years after he first appeared, Holmes remains the template for the fictional detective.