Ian Rankin > Quotes

“It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.”
― Ian Rankin, Knots and Crosses

“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.”
― Ian Rankin, The Flood

“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

“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

“It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.”
― Ian Rankin, Exit Music

“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, Beggar's Banquet

“[About a tiresome colleague]: He could bore for Scotland.”
― Ian Rankin

“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

“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.”
― Ian Rankin, The Complaints

“Christ on a bike, Tony …”
― Ian Rankin

“The man nodded and brought a bottle from the glass-fronted fridge,”
― Ian Rankin, The Complaints

“...trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.”
― Ian Rankin, Knots and Crosses