"Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe."

"We have more choice than ever before about where and how we buy and read books."

"People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two."

"You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story."

"In crime books it's possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it's new. Nowadays it's part of our world and we can simply assume that knowledge if we write about it."

"I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show."

"I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our working environment will be a change for the better."

"I think that everyone has something that they will kill for."

"We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press."

"I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister."

"When you're depressed you retreat and you go into a smaller world. This is why Brighton worked well for the story, because it's a smaller world than London."

"Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love."

"Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have."

"I'm not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now - have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?"

"New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information."

"I'm drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons - everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade."

"We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise."

"It's not until you're older that you realise how important the things that happened to you when you were a kid are. Even things you only half remember."

"One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories."

"As a reader you recognise that feeling when you're lost in a book? You know the one - when whatever's going on around you seems less real than what you're reading and all you want to do is keep going deeper into the story whether it's about being halfway up a mountain in Brazil in 1823 of in love with a man you aren't sure you can trust or fighting a war in the last human outpost, somewhere beyond the moon. Well, if you're writing that book it's real for you too."

"I am completely unflustered by whichever medium people choose to read my words. I'm just delighted they're reading them at all!"

"Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job."

"There's nothing like a military man, even out of uniform."

"A journey is an achievement, Maria, just as much as a mathematical proof."

"This is the cusp of an age at least as exciting and as brimful of potential as the early days of the printing press."

"The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish."

"The hard fact is that writing is available to readers because of market factors as much as particular writing talent."

"The financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession."

"We are living in glorious days where each readers' voice can be heard."

"Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time."

"Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies."

"The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends."

"What was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go?"

"The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble."

"Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine."

"Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it."

"Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification."

"Scotland consistently produces world-class writers."

"It's ridiculous " a girl steps out, goes dancing, gets her hair cut, decides to spend the summer in Italy and it's a scandal. A chap does it and no one bats an eyelid."

"Today is the anniversary of my husband's death," Maria announced. It was a dramatic statement, but the occasion seemed to demand it. "And I am going to leave."

"I spend a lot of time imagining things - in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job."

"For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it."

"If there's one shade a woman of colour can't wear it's got to be the one everyone expects, hasn't it?"

"Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists."

"Edinburgh is alive with words."

"There was something unbearable about the damp, dark earth closing over a coffin and the still, empty flesh that was inside. She had attended a hundred funerals, but when you really loved someone there was something too final about a burial. Something brutal."

"It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to."

"As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it's our literary heritage that is at risk - a vital part of our culture."

"I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it."

"The good thing about the aristocracy " German or English " was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought."