Quotes

[on writing mystery stories] I have a very strong response to what I feel is the spirit of a place. When I come upon the right setting I feel immediately 'This is where it happened'.

[If] detective fiction flourishes best in the most difficult of times, we may well be at the beginning of a golden age.

I think I'm very frightened of violence. I hate it. And it may be that by writing mysteries I am able, as it were, to exorcise this fear, which may very well be the same reason so many people enjoy reading a mystery.

When I first heard that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, I immediately wondered: Did he fall - or was he pushed? [on her interest in mysterious deaths developing in childhood]

That kind of crime writing was dull, in the sense that it was unrealistic, prettifying and romanticizing murder, but having little to do with real blood-and-guts tragedy. One simply cannot take these as realistic books about murder, about the horror of murder, the tragedy of murder, the harm that murder does.

If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.

Perhaps Adam Dalgliesh is an idealized version of what I'd have liked to be if I had been born a man.