Ian Rankin

You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be…

— Ian Rankin

In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S.

— Ian Rankin

When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize.

— Ian Rankin

“Down Where the Drunkards Roll.” “How”

— Ian Rankin

“1446, that's when the foundations were laid. It took forty years to complete." "Sounds like some builders I know," Rebus said. "Can't…

— Ian Rankin

When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as…

— Ian Rankin

“went to take a look at it. A plaque”

— Ian Rankin

My mother worked in a school canteen - then worked in the canteen of a chicken factory. Every Friday, the pay packet…

— Ian Rankin

I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a…

— Ian Rankin

I don't want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops…

— Ian Rankin

“...despite rumors to the contrary, you're on the side of the angels. (...) Whether you like it or not.”

— Ian Rankin

Rebus was eating breakfast in the canteen and wishing there was more caffeine in the coffee, or more coffee in the coffee…

— Ian Rankin

I would have loved to have been a rock n' roll star. But none of us was musical, and none of us…

— Ian Rankin

I don't hang out with cops.

— Ian Rankin

[About a tiresome colleague]: He could bore for Scotland.

— Ian Rankin

A good album should be more than the sum of its parts.

— Ian Rankin

“Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and resilience to all but the most terminal of life's tragedies.”

— Ian Rankin

It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.

— Ian Rankin

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet…

— Ian Rankin

It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.

— Ian Rankin

“Rebus remembered that the premature withdrawal of the penis during intercourse for contraceptive reasons was often referred to as ‘getting off at…

— Ian Rankin

“I'm caught, he thought, between a cushion and a soft place”

— Ian Rankin

“My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn't know what he was doing." "You mean you went to an expensive…

— Ian Rankin

The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It's a…

— Ian Rankin

From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The…

— Ian Rankin