Quotes from Val McDermid

No. It's no the same. The interviewers want you to say what they want to hear. I want to hear what you have to say.

Patsy McDonald had the artificial brightness and dead eyes that go hand in hand with prescription antidepressants. They

We see some of the worst things that mankind can do to each other and I still get shocked by some of the things that occur. Most people can go home and talk to their families about what they've done at work. We can't. But even if I could, I don't want my family to know some of the things that I've seen.

You always remember the first time. Isn't that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder.

If you want to last more than five minutes as a private investigator, you've got to have the instincts of a chameleon. Gumshoes that stand out in the crowd are as much use to the client as a chocolate chip pan.

She'd cook like an angel and fuck like a whore

We all make mistakes, Carol. Sometimes they're more expensive than others. But I don't deserve to lose you,' he said, spreading his hands in appeal.

You take the lead. He'll open up more easily to a copper than a mumbo jumbo man

They both possessed a victimhood that had been conferred because they'd both been guilty of being female in a world where some men believed they deserved never to feel powerless.

There's a thing called narcissistic personality disorder. People who have an inflated sense of their own importance, a lack of empathy for others. They're vain, they crave the power over others they think they deserve. They can be arrogant and callous. They think they're better than everybody else and they don't care who they trample on in their desire to get what they want.' 'A bit like Donald Trump, then?

What do you think, boy? is he just another lying bastard, or what?' 'Prrrt,' the cat said on a rising intonation, his eyes closed to slits. 'I thought you'd say that. I agree, I know how to pick them

I know that. I do watch Spooks.' Carol was surprised. 'You do? I don't.' 'You should. They do.

You can't prove a negative. I can't prove there are no such thing as vampires any more than you can prove you're not a lesbian.

As Richard has pointed out on several occasions, I subscribe to the irregular verb theory of life: I am a trained investigator, you have a healthy curiosity, she/he is a nosy parker.

Without science, there would be no you; without you, the future would offer a much narrower prospect.

We take the staples of modern life so much for granted until we're deprived of them. People do live quite well without what we consider to be basics, but they manage because they've never been de-skilled by their presence. To lose them when you've lived all your life with power at the touch of a switch and water at the turn of a tap is shocking, then unsettling, then grindingly depressing.

To come up against someone who appeared not to give a damn about exerting petty power almost restored his faith in the public.

Look at you. Finally, you look upset. Is that what's bothering you now?' She stepped close to him and pushed him hard in the chest, making him stumble backwards. 'The fact that you didn't predict this? Didn't work it out? That you're not as smart as you thought you were? the great Tony Hill fucked up and now my brother's dead?' She pushed him again and he had to twist away to avoid falling down the stairs.

Honestly, Mum, how can you say someone's a great writer if you've got a stack of reference books next to you? It's just showing off. If I behaved like that in front of other people, you'd totally tell me off when we got home. So.why is it alright for T. S. Eliot to swagger about like a complete know it all and make the rest of us feel stupid?

Admittedly, they [(places in novels)] didn't all have such ridiculous names as the ones in the Piddle Valley where her father's group of parishes was centered. It would have been hard to make credible a romantic fiction set in Farleigh Piddle, Middle Piddle, Nether Piddle and Piddle Dummer.

Grief is individual. Some like it public, some like it private. For some, it's complicated because their relationship with the dead was complicated.

They'd all known each other long enough to forgive each other's faults, to accept each other's politics and to say what would be unsayable in any other company.

What it had done, however, was to give him a feeling of power and control that had taken him back to how he used to feel every day.

It wasn't enough but it was a start. It might keep him going...