Quotes by

Denise Mina

I always wanted to work at Take A Break magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after Id done my law degree and didnt even get an interview. I only wrote Garnethill because I didnt get that job! – Denise Mina

I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didnt realise political writing could be so funny. – Denise Mina

We dont really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. Its a cultural thing, so maybe we dont need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isnt as nice here so theres no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles. – Denise Mina

Comics dont work if the story is all in the text and the images are illustrative. Its hard to have enough faith in the artists to allow them to do their job. – Denise Mina

In the Garnethill trilogy, people always forget that Maureen ODonnells dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law, but no-one ever thinks theyre middle-class – theyre just working class because they speak with accents. – Denise Mina

Even if people do wrong, were social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are bad or evil is just an unwillingness to engage an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesnt help anyone. – Denise Mina

In the forensic science course I took at university they used photographs of dead bodies. For ballistics they showed us a guy lying on the floor, and his head had burst. – Denise Mina

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. – Denise Mina