81 Quotes by Philip Kerr

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

All nationalism is based on racism and hate. I'm Scottish; I was born in Scotland, as my parents, as my grandparents.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

After a while, you get tired of being the official Scot and defending everything Scottish.

As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.

History asks us to imagine ourselves in a period, but it's a very different situation when you're in that period and faced with those situations.

I always worry I've probably written one too many Bernie Gunther books and that I should probably give him his gold watch.

I don't really like heroes who always behave heroically. That's not interesting to me.

I really wanted to write the way Kubrick makes films - 'Strangelove,' '2001', 'Clockwork Orange', 'Barry Lyndon' - they're all so different.