Author

If the weather is nice, I play tennis, which is pretty much the only exercise that I do. I try to do that as much as I can.

From Mark Billingham

We didn't have all the distractions that young people have today. We didn't have these incredible computer games and social networks to engage with. I understand that. But once young readers do discover reading, when they discover a book which they fall in love with, it really unleashes something new in their imagination.

From Mark Billingham

A reader's own imagination is a far more powerful form of CGI than anything any movie can provide because it's unique. In your own imagination, you can enter all sorts of worlds, and they are unique to you because no other reader will interpret a book the same way.

From Mark Billingham

I discovered reading through libraries. I grew up in a house that wasn't brimming with books.

From Mark Billingham

All you can hope for when you get a book adapted for TV is that you get a good actor and not some muppet off 'EastEnders.'

From Mark Billingham

In America, they have specialist mystery book stores with whole sections devoted to cat mysteries, golf mysteries, quilting mysteries. It's a hugely broad genre from the darkest noir to tales of a 19th-century vet who solves crimes, thanks to his talking cat.

From Mark Billingham

Whenever people ask where I get my sick and twisted ideas from, I reply, 'Just open your eyes.'

From Mark Billingham

There have been some brilliant and very successful standalone books that work in themselves and also seem to refresh a series. Anyone who writes a series lives in fear of it becoming stale, so you do whatever you can to keep it fresh - although it does feel a bit nerve-racking to write outside of your comfort zone.

From Mark Billingham

I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.

From Mark Billingham

The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.

From Mark Billingham

Mark Billingham

Notable Quotes

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