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 a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck.

In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.

I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.

My father worked in a grocery store. When the grocery chain went into administration, he eventually got a job in the naval dockyard in an office preparing the charts for the boats and the submarines before they headed out.

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

I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.

People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

Jekyll and Hyde' I read in high school. I was expecting a Hollywood-type horror story and couldn't believe it when I got this very complex narrative from all these different points of view.

Why does any novelist keep writing long after they've made money? Because they've failed to write the perfect novel.

My parents were working class and didn't have much money, so holidays tended to be two weeks in a caravan at St. Andrews or a B&B in Blackpool.

My mother worked in a school canteen - then worked in the canteen of a chicken factory. Every Friday, the pay packet money would be allocated to cover bills.