Joan organizes our social life, and on weekends I follow her around.

Robert Rotenberg does for Toronto what Ian Rankin does for Edinburgh.

I am the despair of my accountant; I am the plastic bags of receipts.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.

She found me intolerable. But she got to know me, and I wore her down.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

We create our own worlds. We destroy our own worlds. It is that simple.

I didn't have to say it. I just had to write it. It was painful enough.

We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect.

If you chomp down too hard on my work, you're going to break your teeth.

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

As a pirate, she once undressed a fencing instructor using only her sword!

I like crazy shoes or unusual cowboy boots and I collect big belt buckles.

There is still a funny notion that women should not write violent fiction.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures.

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.

You have to live where you wake up, even if someone else dreamed you there.

The greatest gift is our own eyes, sense of smell, and abilities to deduce.

I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.

Everyone’s gone mad, typing to themselves all day long like mindless robots.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

I'm clenched down, I'm locked in on it, which is my general approach to life.

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.

Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.

The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law.

Frost is back - this is a brilliant read, I can't recommend it highly enough.

In the first person, the readers feel smart, like it's them solving the case.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

I'm terrified to get married. I'm not getting married till my gay friends can.

She wanted to feel safe. Untouchable in her home. The ultimate female fantasy.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection.

I write pretty much anywhere - on planes, in hotel rooms, anywhere in my house.

You can't cure a chipped plate. All you can do is live with it or throw it out.

This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

Collins masterfully blends fact and fiction...transcends the historical thriller.

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

I do not understand how on earth you can become a writer without seeing the world.

Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.

It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!

Chance wore a white tuxedo with tails. On anyone else? Doopy. On him? Yes, please.

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

Sometimes you can't be what you ought to be, you can't have what you ought to have.

Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University.

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