David Hewson quotes:

Historic Amsterdam, that old part you first see when you turn up at Centraal Station, may have its monuments, but it's also the most tawdry and overcrowded part of the city.

Nobody strikes a medal for the Royal Military Canal campaign any more, but a pint in the back bar of the ancient Mermaid Inn, perched in front of one of the biggest and oldest inglenooks you're ever likely to see, is its own reward.

Romney Marsh remains one of the last great wildernesses of south-east England. Flat as a desert, and at times just as daunting, it is an odd, occasionally eerie wetland straddling the coastal borders of Kent and Sussex, rich in birds, local folklore and solitary medieval churches.

Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name.

In London, the home of the quick deal is that outer ring of the seven circles of hell, Tottenham Court Road, where, as a rule, finding something with an advertised price is as likely as spotting a mermaid under Vauxhall Bridge.

Why do we use flash at all? Because photography is not the same as eyesight. We can see in low-light situations where cameras, dependent upon a physical process to record visual information, are half blind.

Once you get over the culture shock, Filey is a pleasant spot, particularly at the beginning or end of the summer, when the hotels are half full. The brave go in winter, when the wind can be bitter and biting and Filey resumes its real life as a tiny, introverted fishing community.

Alfriston is a compact village set around a rather traffic-weary High Street, mainly of old, timbered buildings. The principal sights lie to the east on the river side.

The bronze dwarfs give you the first clue that Wroclaw is no ordinary city. They lurk all over the place, carousing outside pubs, snoring at the doors of hotels, peeking out from behind the bars of the old city jail.

Few areas which are not publicly owned can boast as many footpaths as the Cuckmere Valley. For a short walk, a footbridge across the river leads back to the little hamlet of Milton Street, where another classic local pub, the Sussex Ox, provides an admirable lunch.

Low light demanded 'fast' film, usually ISO 400 or higher; the fastest available would be about ISO 1000. When the sun was bright, you would reach for ISO 64 to avoid the burned-out look of overexposure.

Most visitors to Amsterdam will wander into the red-light district out of sheer curiosity. The narrow streets are mostly safe day and night - just don't try to take pictures of the women working in the windows.

Scripts are very different to books. They are blueprints for building, not the building.

The English Channel is such a narrow little puddle, you cannot help wondering why no invader has succeeded in crossing it since 1066.

The truth about the Costa del Sol is that what endures, what is worthwhile, is what is Spanish.

I want to do more audio originals because I think that it is a fascinating medium. If you think about it, this is original storytelling.

Flash turns up the optical volume so that whatever lies behind the lens - be it film or a digital sensor - is a little more receptive.

Viral infections, such as mumps, rubella and meningitis, cause inflammation of the inner ear or auditory nerve, resulting in permanent damage.

In Filey, you eat early to prepare for the highlight of the evening: social intercourse of a kind one thought relegated to Stanley Holloway monologues.

Flash photography can be horrible. In the hands of an expert who knows how to bounce all that searing bright light in the right direction, it may make an impossible picture workable.

The hearing test, which involved sitting in a quiet room listening to noises of various pitch played through headphones, confirmed the worst. I had no hearing in my left ear whatsoever.

Stand outside De Eland, on the Berenstraat Bridge over the Prinsengracht, and you see what real Amsterdam life is like.

Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all' - her hands swept the vast constellations above them - 'this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more?

Old Filey lies around the Ravine, a glacial gash running down to Coble Landing. This is the fishing Filey of centuries past, with neat little terraced cottages and a cluster of attractive 18th century houses.

There are any number of reasons for visiting Filey. The beach is clean, long, and rarely crowded. The countryside is bold and handsome, with one maritime feature that deserves to be better known: the long, thin rock finger of the Brigg, pointing into the chilly grey waters of the North Sea.

Opinions are 10 a penny. In the spin-driven, PR-controlled world of the 21st century, hard facts are rare indeed.

Torremolinos has no Jesus Gil, no pretty little old town, and no resident celebrities to sing its praises.

Tomorrow and tomorrow come creeping in and always will. We're fools trapped in a mechanism of our own unconscious making. Shadows strutting and fretting for one brief hour upon a stage, then heard no more. I'll weep an ocean in my heart, if the world would give me time. But not now.

And still you'll hesitate to tell him, won't you? Why? Because you're a woman? Is your destiny such a small thing then? To keep your legs open and your mouth shut?

There are no secrets.' The thing smiled, showing a row of even, childlike teeth. 'None worth keeping. Only the ones you hide from yourself, which are the most damaging and hurtful of all. Truth is truth, and lie is lie. Tell yourself one's the other and all the world turns kilter.

In the world of crime novels, the annual Audible Sounds of Crime awards are a pretty big deal, and I was thrilled to be shortlisted for my fifth novel in my bestselling Nic Costa series.

Authors do this for a living, and if you take their work for nothing, you are depriving them of a living.

In a sense, there is no such thing as a bargain in computing. Models which are popular sell for the price they are supposed to fetch for the best part of their product cycle.

In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.

It's a long ride home with nothing but me for company. I bore myself sometimes. Not often. Just now and again.

There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly-controlled and highly-internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end.

The only sheets I'll ever long for are my own.

What must be done must be done, whatever the price, the cost, the pain. One day we all must walk through fire.

A nation's not a child, for God's sake. ... It's like a wild horse you tame by breaking it. Or a fiery woman you slap till she sees sense and warms your bed.

Talking to Lee Child and discovering, from his chapter in The Chopin Manuscript, that he's even more of an audio geek than I am (as his chapter in Chopin proves).