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" 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. "

Ian Rankin

Short

Radio

You

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" Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up with. You've got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I'm not like that and I've realised that I don't need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not. "

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

" 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. "

" Writers always think their greatest work is just ahead of them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

Ian Rankin

Liberal

" My parents were working class and didn't have much money, so holidays tended to be two weeks in a caravan at St. Andrews or a B&B in Blackpool. "

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

Ian Rankin

Self-Sufficient

Parents

" No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say. "

" 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. "

" 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 don't hang out with cops. "

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

Ian Rankin

Games

Think

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

" 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. "

" I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice. "

" 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. "

" 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. "