Quotes from Ann Cleeves

It was precisely midnight when he stepped through the door. Taylor had said he wanted everyone in the Incident Room an hour before first light the next day, but Perez wasn't ready for sleep. As he switched on the kettle to make tea, he remembered he hadn't eaten since lunchtime and stuck sliced bread under the grill, fished margarine and marmalade from the fridge. He'd have breakfast now, save time in the morning.

I don't understand how anyone can write if they don't use public transport. I earwig all the time.

His thoughts were wheeling and dipping like the gulls over the estuary, groping for an explanation, feeling at last he was making sense of what lie behind Walden's death...

They think of themselves as your grandparents,' he said. But call them whatever you like. James and Mary?

Oh, I'm interested in everything, Joe. That's why I'm a bloody brilliant detective.' She gave him her widest smile. 'That's why I'm in charge and you're sitting there, doing as you're told.

Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she'd been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she'd be so bored she'd commit murder herself.

And once the others started shouting too, she stopped speaking and just watched. Pleased, as if it was what she had wanted all the time. That hate spreading like a wild fire on the hill.' A pause. 'It was as if she was drunk on the power.

He was never very good at talking about feelings. He'd been on his own for so long that it was as if he'd had to learn a new language

Vera had a stab of recognition which made her stop in her tracks. For a moment, the woman, overweight, aggressive, seen reflected in the shop window, looked very much like her.

In theory Vera liked strong women; in practice they often irritated her.

Now it came back in jagged flashes, like the sunlight on the pavements. She thought, This is what it is like to be old. This is how old people remember their childhood.

The road climbed steeply and then they were looking down at the village of Lovacott: a group of houses clustered around a small square, which was hardly more than the main street widened. A shop that seemed to sell everything, a pub. There was nothing picturesque here. No thatch. It would never have featured in an episode of Midsomer Murders.

the light had the clear, sharp quality which comes before rain.

rooms, easy to heat. Now there was one L-shaped open-plan

Mary watched her fondly. 'My Clive

You never answered back?

He spent too much of his time responding to disasters that never happened.

Anna opened her eyes and saw a pair of hands, streaked and shiny with blood. No face.

She fell suddenly and deeply asleep. A reaction to the shock, she thought later. It was as if a fuse had blown. She needed to escape.

lack of faith had little to do with choice. Doubt was a cancer that grew unbidden.

I especially don't like the graphic violence against women and children often depicted in novels such as 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and others. I'm not sure if it's being done just to entertain or whether it really is necessary for the characters involved.

A writer loses possession of her work as soon as it's reaches its audience. Each reader brings his own experience and prejudice and imagination to the work. Television adaptation just goes one step further, and the novelist has to learn to let go.

Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.

Shetland's influences are far more Scandinavian than Celtic.