Val McDermid Quotes

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Val McDermid

Profession : Writer

Birth : June 4, 1955

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.

Val McDermid

The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense comes from.

Val McDermid

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.

Val McDermid

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.

Val McDermid

We all present versions of ourselves. The person you are at work is not the same person you are at home. The face we present in our most intimate relationships is not the face we present to the world.

Val McDermid

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.

Val McDermid

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.

Val McDermid

If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye.

Val McDermid

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

Val McDermid

Why do the police need to know where I am? In the hands of a benevolent government, they could be looking after your interests, but what if the next government isn't so benevolent?

Val McDermid

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.

Val McDermid