Philip Kerr quotes:

I really wanted to write the way Kubrick makes films - 'Strangelove,' '2001', 'Clockwork Orange', 'Barry Lyndon' - they're all so different.

I will say that anyone who supports Scottish independence should go to Athens. Because nothing works. It is a disaster. It is a ruined, dirty place where people do not have money or future prospects. The day one after independence, Scotland would be worse.

After a while, you get tired of being the official Scot and defending everything Scottish.

Religion was quite a thing in our house - we were Baptists. Some Sundays I went to church three times. If there was a talk on missionary work in the afternoon, I could be there all bloody day. But religion took its first big knock after Dad died.

I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.

All nationalism is based on racism and hate. I'm Scottish; I was born in Scotland, as my parents, as my grandparents.

I think the context of an hour-long drama gives breathing space that you don't get in a film.

Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.

I used to play quite a good lead guitar, R&B style. Clapton and BB King are heroes.

A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.

Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.

If I weren't a writer, I think I might have thrown myself more enthusiastically into advertising. But, it's difficult to imagine being a diligent copywriter. It would be quite exasperating for me.

It's not easy being the world's policeman. No one thanks you for it.

The fascination for me writing about crime in Berlin was the idea that there was this much bigger crime taking place in the background, a fantastically epochal moment in history which is just going on. That just sort of makes the whole thing have a greater resonance.

Being British, we tend to think of ourselves as America's best friend. And as your best friend, that gives us a little bit of license to point out things that could have been handled better.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ...

History asks us to imagine ourselves in a period, but it's a very different situation when you're in that period and faced with those situations.

Scotland is the only case in the world where the poor part of a territory wants to separate from the rich part. If independence came, one option is to keep the pound as its currency, so that all economic decisions will continue to be taken by the Bank of England.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

the man who succeeds is the man who is able to reduce problems to their simplest terms and who has the courage of his convictions - despite the objections of intellectuals. The courage to speak, perhaps, even when he believes that what he is suggesting sounds like madness.

The mark of a writer is to make a story as likely as possible, and I've done my best to deliver authentic atmosphere.

I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.