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" Because I write prose, when I sat down to write a comic, it feels like my brain's working differently. It actually feels like different bits of my head are springing into action. "

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" It's very hard to be cut off in Glasgow because it's such a small city. You know, we have the highest rate of per-capita imprisonment, certainly in Britain, maybe in Europe. We have a very high murder rate here. So most people will know someone who's been to prison. "

Denise Mina

Prison

Know

You

" You have to take your ego out of it and say, do I want people to be obsequious to me or do I want to write good books? If it's the latter, you have to take criticism. It's annoying, but that's how to do good stuff; listen to other people. "

Denise Mina

Good

You

" 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? "

" Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it. "

" I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that. "

" People are very frightened in publishing at the moment. Nobody knows what sells. More so now because the market's changing so fundamentally because of Kindle and electronic publishing. It's a fundamental shift in the way stories are put out into the world. "

" Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage; an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone. "

" I'm terrified to get married. I'm not getting married till my gay friends can. "

" I was very aware of office politics because I was so baffled by them. So much so goes unsaid. No one says 'you're a cheeky so-and-so,' no one says 'you're so moody,' nobody ever confronts anyone else about anything. But I'm very crass, and I'm very confrontational, and I have a temper. I had to be hyper-vigilant in every office I worked in. "

" I hate it when I'm reading a comic, and the dialogue looks like stickers stuck on top to explain what's going on. For me the best is when your eye goes in a certain point and moves through the composition and then springs out on the dialogue, or gets confused in the image and then goes to the dialogue for an explanation. "

" I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy. "

Denise Mina

Frenzy

Disgusting

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

" 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. "

" With my earlier books, I got quite bored being with one protagonist all the way through. With the Alex Morrow books, I wanted to do something a bit more holistic, so there were lots of different points of view, and I wanted to look at aspects of crime that you don't tend to look at. "

" The book I made it big with in the U.S. was my fourth book, 'Sanctum.' My novels sell really well both there and in Canada, so once a year I do a promotional tour, visiting a different city every two days, doing book readings and signings. "

" Journalism is a Darwinian process. "

" None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read. "

Denise Mina

People

Want

" I think the class divide is going to change. I think a lot more working class people are going to get published. It is really class ridden, literature. "

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

" In my heart I'm just a lucky waitress. "

" There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great. "

" I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire. "

" Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve. "

" If you went for a job interview in a Glasgow law firm, they used to ask you what school you went to. And that was a way of finding out what religion you were. "

" I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form. "

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

" I love bleak things. "

" I always wanted to work at 'Take A Break' magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote 'Garnethill' because I didn't get that job! "

" I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws. "

Denise Mina

Love

Human

" I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way. "