Quotes from Val McDermid

went down the supermarket for my messages

But Germany too had been a civilized country. No one could predict what might happen in any country when the numbers of the dispossessed reached a critical mass. Anyone who promised salvation would find a following.

Although narcissists can appear charismatic, that charm is always and only exercised in the service of their own greater glory. They disregard the feelings and the interests of others and are often skilled at manipulating them into providing what the narcissist wants right here, right now. From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

Remember what they say about bridges. The hard thing is to know which ones to cross and which ones to burn.

A couple of hundred feet above the panoramic route Fiona was travelling back to the city, Kit was opening a heavy pair of wooden shutters with ornate iron fittings.

I reckon most people that chase money only do it because they don't really know what it is they do want.

become antsy

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

I'd like to be more spontaneous.

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.

One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today - love, money, family. They haven't gone out of fashion, so it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.

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.

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.

Time for the likeliest story since Mary told Joseph it was God's.

He frowned as he struggled to remember. It was like watching an elephant crochet.

That was the trouble with moving houses; no matter how carefully you packed the books, they never ended up on the new shelves in quite the right place.

Sometimes, the only things that make you feel good are the same ones that worked when you were five. Yes, I slammed the door

When all else fails, go for the ego.

The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it

The hardest thing about being a grown up is realizing there are no magic formulas to release the ones we love from pain. Maybe that's why I enjoy computer games so much; you get to be God.

You know it's a bad case when the only way you can catch up on your sleep is to get unconscious.

I failed her. And she's out of my life. I don't even know where she's living. What she's doing to get through the days. And I miss her. Every single day, I miss her.

We make high demands on the people we expect to deliver justice, and we don't always appreciate how much it eats away at them.

It's only hunting you that keeps me from being you.