If you went for a job interview in a Glasgow law firm, they used to ask you what school you went to. And that was a way of finding out what religion you were.

A man who thinks he has a higher purpose can do terrible things, even to those he professes to love.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.

I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted.

Journalism is a Darwinian process.