Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.

- Mark Billingham

You throw the kitchen sink at your early books. You put everything in there. It's like when you meet a new girlfriend or boyfriend, you tell them all your best stories. By the time you have been married for 10 years, they are crying, 'Shut up!'

- Mark Billingham

If the weather is nice, I play tennis, which is pretty much the only exercise that I do. I try to do that as much as I can.

- Mark Billingham

I've never read an ebook. Print every time.

- Mark Billingham

I write slowly and get distracted a lot.

- Mark Billingham

I was never a fan of cozy mysteries of anything set in the countryside, you know.

- Mark Billingham

I wanted to write at school - to write funny stories which the teacher might ask me to read out to the class. It's all basically about showing off.

- Mark Billingham

I think women tend to write about how violence feels, whereas men tend to write about what violence looks like.

- Mark Billingham

I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.

- Mark Billingham

I read 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather' back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be.

- Mark Billingham

I discovered reading through libraries. I grew up in a house that wasn't brimming with books.

- Mark Billingham

Whenever people ask where I get my sick and twisted ideas from, I reply, 'Just open your eyes.'

- Mark Billingham

Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.

- Mark Billingham

Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.

- Mark Billingham

All you can hope for when you get a book adapted for TV is that you get a good actor and not some muppet off 'EastEnders.'

- Mark Billingham

All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.

- Mark Billingham

A good agent will sometimes need to be a scrapper, and that's the one you want.

- Mark Billingham

I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.

- Mark Billingham

I could never gamble on stocks and shares because I saw my father get hurt that way - he lost quite a lot of money when the stock market collapsed in 2001.

- Mark Billingham

I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.

- Mark Billingham