Literary Birthday – 3 April – Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill was born 3 April 1936, and died 12 January 2012.

Seven Quotes

  1. I had a kid brother who was five years younger than me and when he was left in my tender care, I would entertain him by making up stories. They were stories full of sudden death, blood, violence, and narrow escapes.
  2. If you’ve got something to say or a good story to tell then the greatest problem is writing to the end of it. If you can do that, then even if it’s not that good you have got something to work at.
  3. I’ve got ideas scattered around; I write them in my notebook and keep them on my computer. Even as I am coming to the end of one book, ideas for the next are rolling around in my mind. I’ll pick up a few threads that I’ve sown before and see where they lead.
  4. You are never alone with a novel. The characters become as real to me as real people.
  5. When I get up in the morning, I ask my wife whether I should write a Booker prize-winning novel, or another best-selling crime book. We always come down on the side of the crime book.
  6. Writing is like painting: a highlight here, a touch of colour there, can suggest more than an album of photographs can show.
  7. The only bit of advice I would give is: when you finish that first manuscript and send it off to a publisher, start your second immediately. It will be infinitely better and you will have it finished by the time you get a reply about the first.

Reginald Hill was an English crime writer. He was the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He is best known for his crime novels about Dalziel and Pascoe, which were adapted for BBC television. The first book in the series was A Clubbable Woman.

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 3rd April 2014
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