Denise Mina Quotes

Quotes about:

Books Crime Middle Class Reading Writing

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

Denise Mina

Fiction, Crime, Social

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Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids.

Denise Mina

Brother, Kids, Female

"Murder she wrote - and plenty of it: Denise Mina on her career". Interview with Peter Guttridge, www.theguardian.com. July 28, 2007.

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To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

Denise Mina

Strong, Opinion, Default

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None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.

Denise Mina

People, Want, Knows

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I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

Denise Mina

Thinking, Negative, Flaws

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I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

Denise Mina

Wings, Guy, Fiction

"Murder she wrote - and plenty of it: Denise Mina on her career". Interview with Peter Guttridge, www.theguardian.com. July 28, 2007.

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In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.

Denise Mina

Heart, Lucky, My Heart

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I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted.

Denise Mina

Feet, Fiction, Crime

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In the 'Garnethill' trilogy, people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law, but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

Denise Mina

Art, Brother, Dad

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Journalism is a Darwinian process.

Denise Mina

Journalism, Process

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I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

Denise Mina

Children, Fun, Writing

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People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

Denise Mina

Reading, Murder Mysteries, People

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There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

Denise Mina

Witty, Real, Crime Novels

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I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.

Denise Mina

Writing, Political, Stories

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Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.

Denise Mina

Sophisticated, Enough, Reader

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I hate it when I'm reading a comic, and the dialogue looks like stickers stuck on top to explain what's going on. For me the best is when your eye goes in a certain point and moves through the composition and then springs out on the dialogue, or gets confused in the image and then goes to the dialogue for an explanation.

Denise Mina

Hate, Confused, Spring

"‘Dragon Tattoo’: Denise Mina on Larsson, feminist crime fiction". Interview with Noelene Clark, herocomplex.latimes.com. December 13, 2012.

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If you went for a job interview in a Glasgow law firm, they used to ask you what school you went to. And that was a way of finding out what religion you were.

Denise Mina

Jobs, School, Law

"Probing The Psyche Of Glasgow's Mean Streets". "Morning Edition" with Vicki Barker, www.npr.org. August 11, 2008.

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My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.

Denise Mina

Class, Parent, Odd

"Murder she wrote - and plenty of it: Denise Mina on her career". Interview with Peter Guttridge, www.theguardian.com. July 28, 2007.

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I'm terrified to get married. I'm not getting married till my gay friends can.

Denise Mina

Gay, Married, Terrified

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I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.

Denise Mina

People, Feminism, Phds

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Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

Denise Mina

Book, Mean, Writing

"‘Dragon Tattoo’: Denise Mina on Larsson, feminist crime fiction". Interview with Noelene Clark, herocomplex.latimes.com. December 13, 2012.

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I just got an honorary degree from Glasgow University, and I had to wear around very painful shoes so that I didn't laugh all the way through the ceremony because I felt like an outlaw.

Denise Mina

Shoes, Laughing, Way

"Probing The Psyche Of Glasgow's Mean Streets". "Morning Edition" with Vicki Barker, www.npr.org. August 11, 2008.

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In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

Denise Mina

Real, Thinking, Voice

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I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.

Denise Mina

School, Warrior, Men

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There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.

Denise Mina

Children, Book, Reading

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Denise Mina

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Born: 1966
Occupation: Crime writer
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