Ian Rankin Life Quotations

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.

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.

He is a big fan of pulp fiction/American private-eye stories. He writes very tough, amoral tales of urban life with very few good cops, and usually it is the villains who are the heroes of his books. It is a very interesting take.