""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." "
— Ian Rankin (Knots and Crosses)

"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. "
— Ian Rankin (Knots and Crosses)

"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. "
— Ian Rankin (Knots and Crosses)

"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. "
— Ian Rankin (Beggars Banquet)