Denise Mina > Quotes

“If Morrow worked with herself she'd try and sit a few desks away.”
― Denise Mina, Still Midnight

“Just when you think something can’t get any worse someone who dislikes you comes to watch.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“January is the despairing heart of the Scottish winter”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“Don't go on holiday to Blackpool, it's fucking horrible there.”
― Denise Mina, Field of Blood

“Julia saw the awe on my face. She recognised it. She pouted and graced me with a small, wry smile, then dropped her eyes and turned away as if to say, yes, here I am. I am a peerless pearl who has fallen from her setting. I have rolled into the dust under a couch and been forgotten. But, if you can see past the dust and the gloom, you will see that I am still a pearl.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“The real meaning of stories depends on where they’re told, when and to whom.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“It was Lord of the Flies without table manners.”
― Denise Mina, The Dead Hour

“it is 1958 and men don’t really have words for feelings”
― Denise Mina, The Long Drop

“I said that one of the stories in the Arabian Nights is specifically about the urge to tell a story. It’s primal, the need to tell. It’s not about the listener but the storyteller. In some cultures, not telling your story is regarded as a sign of mental illness.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie’s drinking or Vik’s ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral—none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn’t be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they’d finally forget.”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“The eternal companions of all clever women are mistrust and scorn.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“I often said the wrong thing–wake up, shut up, grow up. These are the wrong things to say when people are sad about some minor cruelty or sentimental incident.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“There is a warmth and a comfort in hearing about people in worse situations than your own. Pity is a hollow virtue. I like it. It’s a form of self-aggrandisement really, bigging yourself up by defining someone as below you. True-crime podcasts are usually great for that but sometimes you have to look really hard to find anyone down there.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“Self-pity makes tyrants, it’s the defining characteristic of brutal regimes,”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“Grief is a scar. The tissue is tough and when it’s cut again, it heals poorly.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“His life had no meaning. It was intolerable. The last three decades had been a hollow waste of time. Hands”
― Denise Mina, Still Midnight

“Ah, the meek. Playing the long game. Sneaky bastards.”
― Denise Mina, Field of Blood

“Lamont, like the judge?”
He tipped his head in embarrassment and looked away quickly. She smiled kindly at him. The two great sources of shame: privilege and penury.”
― Denise Mina, Still Midnight

“These were stories to entertain, told for the shape of them, for the sake of them, for the love of a tale. It was all about the stories and the shapes of the stories. Round ones, spirals, perfect arcs, a ninety-degree take-off with a four-bump landing, and one of his, I remember vividly, was an absurdist finger trap.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“I loved getting up before everyone else, when the house was still and I could read or listen to a podcast alone in a frozen world. I knew where everyone was. I knew they were safe. I could relax.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“schadenfreude.”
― Denise Mina, The Less Dead

“She didn’t read to show off at book groups or for discussion. She never made a show of her erudition. She just liked to be lost.”
― Denise Mina, Every Seven Years

“Bout a month ago. She came in Boxing Day but I put her out. She was begging people, not even tapping, but begging for drink.”
“She can’t have been disrupting ye, surely?” asked Maureen.
“See those old swines over there?” He gestured to his only customers. The old men heard him and their chat fell silent.
The barman raised his voice. “They were asking what they would get for their money. Auld swines, playing on the lassie’s weakness for the drink.” He lowered his voice. “That’s pensioners for ye — they can smell a bargain a mile off,” he muttered, as if the bargain-hunting skill of the elderly was an unspoken universal truth.”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“The door to Jackson’s opens and a man staggers out. He crab-walks away from them, along the pavement until he hits a lamp post. He clings to it, waiting until his legs agree to listen to orders. Confident he has reached an entente cordiale with his knees, he straightens up, watching his rebel legs to see if the truce holds. It does, but only for standing. The moment he attempts a step he is swept around the corner like a trawlerman thrown from a deck in a storm.”
― Denise Mina, The Long Drop

“He was an officious prick with a Freddie Mercury moustache and the social skills of a horny lapdog.”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“One [belief] is that violence is caused by a deficit of morality and justice. On the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators. Steven Pinker”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“When I first came here copyboys wouldn't have been allowed to eat in the canteen with journalists." A smile twitched at one corner of his mouth. "I was a copyboy once, at the Lanarkshire Gazette. Can ye believe that?"

He left a space for her to respond, so she did.

"Can I believe that a man as important as you was ever a copyboy or that Lanarkshire has its own gazette?”
― Denise Mina, Field of Blood

“That got a big laugh. For the rest of the journey, whenever there was a pause or the mood dipped, someone would repeat the punchline and everyone would laugh. This went on until the garrotting in the toilet.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“If you've ever had to run you know that stuff is just stuff. Even rich people can only stand in one room at a time.”
― Denise Mina, Conviction

“He was determined to take responsibility but he was just a cog. She’d seen that many times before. It was a belief often borne of a traumatic childhood, it was so much more manageable to believe himself bad than the world.”
― Denise Mina, Blood Salt Water