John Connolly

I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.

I find that I take a great deal of pleasure knowing I get up people's noses to some degree.

There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don't recognise what I do is crime fiction.

Writers are magpies by nature, always collecting shiny things, storing them away and looking for connections of things.

The only person who needs to know about failure is yourself.

I feel that I'll be buried in Ireland and don't think I'll ever live in the U.S. I'm not comfortable with many aspects of U.S. society - especially the justice system.

If you work at home, you're always on call in a way.

As I get older I tend to rail against the world more and more.

I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.

Anyone who wants bookstores to survive is portrayed as a Luddite who goes around smashing up Kindles.

What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.

There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It's an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.