Val Mcdermid Quotes Quotes

A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn't diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives.
Back in the day, when I started, you were still allowed to make mistakes. You got to make your mistakes in public, in a way. I think the world was a more forgiving place when I started my career, in the sense that we got time and space to develop as a writer.
Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn't feel like a freak.
I am the despair of my accountant; I am the plastic bags of receipts.
I came from a working-class family, but I was supported by a grant system and had my fees paid, so I came out of Oxford with a debt of something like £200.
I did want to be Joni Mitchell for quite a long time.
I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.
I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.
I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time.
I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales.
I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.
I think that crime is a good vehicle for looking at society in general because the nature of the crime novel means that you draw on a wide group of social possibilities.
I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.
I was thinking things had changed: that the next generation of men weren't as institutionally misogynist as the previous were. And then, suddenly, the Internet came along and gave them a platform to voice their feelings anonymously. And boy, did the bile come out.
I won't be attempting to write Jane Austen-style prose - that would be suicidal. But I will attempt to bring the highest level of my own prose, and to make it sparkle.
I'd like to be more spontaneous.
If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye.
It seems to me that one of the things that happened with a lot of literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was that it became very concerned with the academy and less with how people live their lives. We got to a point where the crime novel stepped into the breach. It was also a time when the crime novel stopped being so metropolitan.
It was a bit unimaginable when I began that I'd ever get to 25 books. But it was also unimaginable how much crime-writing would have changed.
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AuthorName
Val McDermid
Profession
Writer
BirthDate
04 June, 1955
Country
Scotland
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