115 Quotes by Val McDermid

A cold case was a story, constructed piece by piece. Sometimes the pieces arrived in the wrong order so it made no sense at first...at the end, if you found all the pieces, you had a coherent tale. Sometimes, though, you ended up with a stack of ill-assorted bits that didn't quite fit...Then it was like one of those novels that won literary prizes, the ones where you got to the end, closed the book and asked yourself, 'What just happened here?

Not even a hand-stitched suit could hide a body gone ruinously to seed. I was tempted to offer some fashion advice, but I didn't think he'd welcome the news that this year, bellies are being worn inside the trousers

As Richard has pointed out on several occasions, I subscribe to the irregular verb theory of life: I am a trained investigator, you have a healthy curiosity, she/he is a nosy parker.

It wasn't enough but it was a start. It might keep him going...

That what I have is not women's intuition but a finely honed copper's instinct for when things aren't right.

It’s your fault because you got me into Morag Fraser. I’d never even heard of the Hebridean Harpies series till you dragged me along to her event. And now I am totally hooked. I was reading Vampires on Vatersay till one in the morning. I just had to finish it. And then I started Banshees of Berneray at breakfast and I could hardly drag myself away from it to come and meet you.

The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it

Honestly, Mum, how can you say someone's a great writer if you've got a stack of reference books next to you? It's just showing off. If I behaved like that in front of other people, you'd totally tell me off when we got home. So.why is it alright for T. S. Eliot to swagger about like a complete know it all and make the rest of us feel stupid?

Tell you what, just to prove I'm not, I'll let you top tonight. You'll be in charge. I'll be the one with handcuffs on.'Carry on like this and you won't be wrong, Merrick thought to himself.