Top 60 Ian Rankin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You wouldn’t think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we’ll do it one day. That’s how negligent we are.”

— Ian Rankin

2. “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

3. “I am, of course, a frustrated rock star – I’d much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it’s not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up.”

— Ian Rankin

4. “He’s as smooth as a fresh-laid turd and gives off the same smell.”

— Ian Rankin

5. “The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you’re dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings – and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.”

— Ian Rankin

6. “At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching – that way, you pick up new ideas.”

— Ian Rankin

7. “You need a great idea, but then you’ve got to carry it through. If you get it right, you’re going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there’s an element of luck.”

— Ian Rankin

8. “Here’s to all the songs and all their singers, in times of darkness and times of light.”

— Ian Rankin

9. “I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We’re still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.”

— Ian Rankin

10. “I’m often asked how I write books, but I don’t think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was ‘I tend to make it up as I go along.’ I’m not sure that’s brilliant advice.”

— Ian Rankin

11. “I’m interested in Scotland now and then, how it’s changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?”

— Ian Rankin

12. “There’s an insult buried in there somewhere, but I can’t quite see it.”

— Ian Rankin

13. “Bad-mouthing everyone else is such a simple option.”

— Ian Rankin

14. “I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.”

— Ian Rankin

15. “War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.”

— Ian Rankin

16. “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

17. “Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God but not in God’s religion?”

— Ian Rankin

18. “Groynes divided the mostly sandy beach into neat compartments.”

— Ian Rankin

19. “The online world could stuff that in its pipe and vape it.”

— Ian Rankin

20. “It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.”

— Ian Rankin

21. “I don’t have many friends. It’s not because I’m a misanthrope. It’s because I’m reserved. I’m self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I’m writing my books.”

— Ian Rankin

22. “It seemed to Rebus that the more expensive something was, the less of it there always seemed to be: tiny little hi-fi systems, watches without numbers, the translucent Dior ankle-socks on Michael’s feet.”

— Ian Rankin

23. “No matter how many awards you’ve won or how many sales you’ve got, come the next book it’s still a blank sheet of paper and you’re still panicking like hell that you’ve got nothing new to say.”

— Ian Rankin

24. “Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.”

— Ian Rankin

25. “Job, actually. I read it once a long time ago. It seems more frightening now though. The man who begins to doubt, who shouts out against his God, looking for a response, and who gets one. ‘God gave the world to the wicked,’ he says at one point, and ‘Why should I bother?’ at another.” “It sounds interesting. But he goes on bothering?” “Yes, that’s the incredible thing.”

— Ian Rankin

26. “I doubt he’d give me the smell from his farts – no, tell a lie: in that one respect he’s being more than generous.”

— Ian Rankin

27. “That guy should be in porn films.” Barclay frowned. “Why’s that then, Allan?” Ward looked at him. “Tell me, Tam, when did you last see a bigger prick?”

— Ian Rankin

28. “Strangulation. It was a fearful way to go, wrestling, kicking your way towards oblivion, panic, the fretful sucking for air, and the killer behind you most likely, so that you faced the fear of something totally anonymous, a death without knowledge of who or why. Rebus had been taught methods of killing in the SAS. He knew what it felt like to have the garotte tighten on your neck, trusting to the opponent’s prevailing sanity. A fearful way to go.”

— Ian Rankin

29. “I’ve always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I’d have a spy story, a space story and a football story.”

— Ian Rankin

30. “There were more good people than bad in the world, they just made less noise.”

— Ian Rankin

31. “It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.”

— Ian Rankin

32. “Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and resilience to all but the most terminal of life’s tragedies.”

— Ian Rankin

33. “We’re ready for the off, then.”

— Ian Rankin

34. “It was a quiet street – people kept themselves to themselves. It.”

— Ian Rankin

35. “My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn’t making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I’d have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.”

— Ian Rankin

36. “Fifteen years, and all he had to show were an amount of self-pity and a busted marriage with an innocent daughter hanging between them. It was more disgusting than sad.”

— Ian Rankin

37. “No sooner had he finished with a case than another two or three appeared in its place. What was the name of that creature? The Hydra, was it? That was what he was fighting. Every time he cut off a head, more popped into his in-tray. Coming back from a holiday was a nightmare. And now they were giving him rocks to push up hills as well.”

— Ian Rankin

38. “I don’t think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread – Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.”

— Ian Rankin

39. “A good album should be more than the sum of its parts.”

— Ian Rankin

40. “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

41. “Rebus reminded himself to stop praying. Perhaps if he stopped praying, God would take the hint and stop being such a bastard to one of his few believers on this near-godforsaken planet.”

— Ian Rankin

42. “Tell me, Francis, do you buy your one-liners wholesale? Only they’re well past their sell-by.”

— Ian Rankin

43. “I think writers have to be proactive: they’ve got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it’s hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there’s a great deal of opportunity out there if you’ve got the right story.”

— Ian Rankin

44. “Bessant friend of the deceased, also an art dealer Malcolm Neilson artist William Allison Neilson’s lawyer Dominic Mann art dealer Eric “Brains” Bain detective, computer specialist Professor Gates pathologist Morris Gerald “Big Ger” Cafferty Edinburgh’s preeminent gangster.”

— Ian Rankin

45. “He’d tried to talk to you about anarchy yesterday but his English and your French conspired against the dialog.”

— Ian Rankin

46. “Ah, but it was not a nice world this, not a nice world at all. It was an Old Testament land that he found himself in, a land of barbarity and retribution.”

— Ian Rankin

47. “Sometimes I think we’re all gentlemen of the road. It’s just that most of us haven’t got the courage to take that first step.”

— Ian Rankin

48. “Often he declined invitations, because to accept meant that he had to dust off his brogues, iron a shirt, brush down his best suit, take a bath, and splash on some cologne. He had also to be affable, to drink and be merry, to talk to strangers with whom he had no inclination to talk and with whom he was not being paid to talk. In other words, he resented having to play the part of a normal human animal.”

— Ian Rankin

49. “This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.”

— Ian Rankin

50. “He felt his arms ache and, looking down, saw that the girl had stopped struggling. There came that point, that sudden, blissful point, when it was useless to go on living, and when the mind and body came to accept that such was the case. That was a beautiful, peaceful moment, the most relaxed moment of one’s life.”

— Ian Rankin