Quotes from Ian Rankin

Bad Men Do What Good Men

It's the same in England,' they'd tell her. 'Wherever you've got Catholics and Protestants in the same place.' Manchester had United (Catholic) and City (Protestant), Liverpool had Liverpool (Catholic) and Everton (Protestant). It only got complicated in London. London even had Jewish teams.

view, returning from the corner shop. He hadn't shaved or combed his hair. His shirt wasn't tucked in. He carried

And you're like a father to me,' Holmes replied, heading for the door. 'The fa-ther I get from you, the easier my life seems to be.

like we're hanging on your every brilliant deduction.

He wasn't management, but that didn't mean he wasn't skilled. Quite the opposite, in Rebus's experience.

When the librarian went over to talk with another girl, Samantha took out the book she wanted and gave her ticket to the old lady librarian with the dyed hair, whom the children called Mrs Slocum.

Rebus nodded and made to follow, his gaze drifting to an engraved invitation on the marble mantelpiece. It was from the Royal College of Surgeons, something to do with a dinner at Surgeons' Hall. 'Black/white tie and decorations' it said along the bottom. The only decorations he had were in a box in his hall cupboard. They went up every Christmas, if he could be bothered.

Modern policing fell into that trap, heading straight for technology – computers and CCTV – to replace old skills and the occasional inspired guess or piece of intuition.

He had been thinking too of goodies and baddies. If you thought bad things – dreams of cruelty and lust – that didn't make you bad. But if your head was full of civilised thoughts and you spent all day as a torturer … It came down to the fact that you were judged by your actions in society, not by the inside of your head.

Bad-mouthing everyone else is such a simple option.

Wars were connected by arms manufacturers, the same arms manufacturers who made the guns used in robberies, who made the guns used by crazy people in America when they when on the rampage in a shopping centre or hamburger restaurant. So already you had connection between hamburgers and dictators. Start from there and the thing just grew and grew.

He's a piece of the jigsaw.' 'Maybe so, John, but if he is, he's a bit of sky or cloud – I can see the picture clearly enough without him.

Scoular's firm, with an injection of Saudi money, is pitching to build a golf resort up north, on land owned by Lord Strathy.

People could go about their lives again. He could give Samantha and Carrie a hug, though he sensed a reticence still in his granddaughter, who was yet to be jabbed. Were things really getting back to normal, or was there no longer any normal for them to get back to?

parked and placed the POLICE sign on the dashboard.

It was a rainy Monday afternoon, and nothing about the day so far boded anything but ill for the rest of the working week.

Thing about that ladder, Shiv, each rung you climb there's another arse waiting to be licked." "What a lovely image." "We all need some poetry in our lives.

I'm game if you are.

information was like a stone skimming across the surface of his brain, soon sinking, never to be retrieved.

Woodwork creaks and out come the freaks, eh?

Ahí estaban los libros, en el cuarto de estar. Los libros de leer solían acabar en el dormitorio, en el suelo en filas, como enfermos en la sala de espera del médico.

The rain had not started falling yet, but it had scheduled an appointment.

But you used to know a good thing when you saw it. Trouble is, that's never what I see when I look in the mirror. What do you see? He looked at her. Sometimes I don't see anything at all.