Ian Rankin
AKA Jack Harvey.
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982 and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987; the Rebus books are now translated into 22 languages and are bestsellers on several continents.
Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow. He is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award, and he received two Dagger Awards for the year's best short story and the Gold Dagger for Fiction. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, and Edinburgh.
A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/ianrankin
“There are worse forms of prostitution than whoring.-Inspector John Rebus”
“I am reading Ian Rankins book Doors Open and am enjoying his dark Edinburgh narrative will rate soon once I have read it. I am also a fan of Jane Austen and have visited her Museum House in Chawton, Hampshire every year for the last three years. My Favourite book is Sense and Sensibility.”
“Chialer, c'était bon quand on perdait au foot, qu'on vous racontait des histoires d'animaux héroïques, ou en entendant "Flower of Scotland" après l'heure de fermeture.”
“...trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.”
“Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.”
“Christ on a bike, Tony …”
“It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.”
“[About a tiresome colleague]: He could bore for Scotland.”
“This was the winter of 2008/9. Work was ongoing to reinstate a tram system in the city. A lot of people couldn’t see the point of trams and many more disliked the disruption. Streets were closed off. There was almost a sense of ‘apartheid’ as the roadworks made it difficult to move from New Town to Old Town and vice versa. Added to which, the weather was fairly grim. And the banks looked ready to implode.”
“The man nodded and brought a bottle from the glass-fronted fridge,”
“Rebus was eating breakfast in the canteen and wishing there was more caffeine in the coffee, or more coffee in the coffee come to that. ”
“It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.”
“You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.”
“This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.”
“War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.”
“Was it all inevitable, John?" Reeve was pushing his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress.Yes," I said. "I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.”
“His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life. ”
“Rebus drank his coffee and felt his head spin. He was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller, and wished that he could turn to the last page and stop all his confusion, all the death and the madness and the spinning in his ears.”