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" I'm not Rebus. We're not the same. I don't even think he'd like me if we met. He'd think I was a wishy-washy liberal. "

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" When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize. "

" I wanted to be able to support myself without begging for handouts from the state. All of the writers I knew when I was a student were all getting grants from the Scottish Arts Council. "

" The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern. "

" I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a spy story, a space story and a football story. "

" I wrote 'Knots and Crosses,' the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction. "

" I grew up in a family that was working-class, which taught me to be careful with money. "

" I would have loved to have been a rock n' roll star. But none of us was musical, and none of us had any instruments. "

" Why does any novelist keep writing long after they've made money? Because they've failed to write the perfect novel. "

" My mother worked in a school canteen - then worked in the canteen of a chicken factory. Every Friday, the pay packet money would be allocated to cover bills. "

" I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. "

" At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas. "

" I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends. "

" I'm not qualified for anything. I've had lots of little jobs, like picking grapes and being a tax man. I can't imagine not writing, because I've done it since I was five or six. Maybe I'd work in academia. That's always what the plan was. "

" I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books. "

" I dunno whether it was to do with my parents - we were working-class - but it was important to me to be self-sufficient. "

Self-Sufficient

" In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time. "

" Punk gave you a kind of chutzpah, so even trying to be a writer, I just thought, 'Well, I'm going to send poems to 'Radio Times,' short stories to the 'Observer,' just have a go. "

" I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio. "

" Being working class, my parents thought, 'Ian's going to uni, the first in the family,' and I'd do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, 'Why am I doing this?' The only thing I was interested in was books and literature. "

" I don't want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops. "

" My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer. "

" When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel. "

" I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up. "

" In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S. "

" I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks. "

" The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It's a country in love with crime fiction. "

" People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story. "

" I don't hang out with cops. "

" I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.' "

" I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story. "