72 Quotes by Mark Billingham

I think women tend to write about how violence feels, whereas men tend to write about what violence looks like.

I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.

Like my fictional protagonist Tom Thorne, I love country. My tastes go back a bit further than his do, and I still listen to stuff from the late '70s and early '80s.

I think there's as much violence, in a way, as a scene with two women having a cup of coffee in a Ruth Rendell novel - in terms of emotional violence and the violence you can inflict with language - as there is in the most graphic kind of serial killer/slasher novel you can think of.

I write slowly and get distracted a lot.

Part of the reason why Scandinavian crime has been so popular is the landscape. It is just so strong and alien. Although without taking anything away, you should probably also never discount the fact that blood does look particularly good against snow.

I think readers' imaginations are far more powerful than anything you can put on a page and, therefore, can conjure up graphic images for themselves, which I think you just have to nudge them towards.

I was never a fan of cozy mysteries of anything set in the countryside, you know.

Whether your audience is in a sweaty basement club or nestled in a favourite armchair, good money has been paid, and attention has got to be grabbed if you are not to be heckled off the stage or find your novel discarded in favour of the latest volume of 'Fifty Shades of Whatever.'