Ruth Rendell

I'm very fond of Tennessee Williams' plays, and when my husband and I went to New Orleans in the late 1970s, we saw 'A Street Car Named Desire.'

I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist.

I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility. I think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.

I always know when a novel is going to be a Barbara Vine one. In fact I believe that if I weren't to write it as Barbara Vine, I wouldn't be able to write it at all.

I don't have any dark desires. And I think most people don't. A few have dark desires and don't sublimate them.

I am interested in names and what they say; it is true. I like to look at the columns of baby names in the newspapers. But I don't run out of new ones for my characters.

Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.

I don't like the way young people write and talk about the old. I don't like their attitude, which, if they weren't young and therefore bright and vibrant, would be called outdated.

Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens. So I can do that.

I always write about what interests me.

If I've got to have a stroke or a heart attack, I'd rather have a heart attack. I don't think that's the only reason I campaign for the Stroke Association, but a stroke would be a terrible thing.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

I'm careful about keeping myself fit and thin, or as thin as I can manage.

I can't sum up my books. They're all rather complicated. Sometimes I think they're too complicated. But that's the way I am. When I start to write a book, my head gets full of all kinds of detail.

I'm a very rigorous person. I like to take exercise. People get mired in old age, they get bent and twisted, but I can stop that.

The knives of jealousy are honed on details.

I have never been a foodie and am seldom very hungry.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.

Some women say as they get older they're no longer noticed: they disappear. Men, for instance, don't see them. Nobody wants them. That doesn't happen to me because of who I am. Not because I'm any more scintillating company, but because I'm Ruth Rendell.

As soon as I know it's about technological things or spies, I lose interest. I want to know what goes on in people's minds.

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

I've never really been satisfied with a book. I always want it to be better.

I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes.

You don't knock television, even if you don't always like what they make of your work. It makes all the difference between being an also-ran writer and very famous.

Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke.

It's not necessary with your friends to discuss something you know you will disagree profoundly on.

Violence is very much with us, and we like to see it. I doubt if you can change that, and I'm not sure you should want to. I have occasionally been very upset by something I was writing, but it's quite rare: I keep my writing very separate from my life.

Where blackmail is involved, telling the police is always a good option.

I've done the big 12-city tours, and I'm never going to do that again - never. I was younger then. It wears you out, you know.

I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'

It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.

I'm not much of an eater.

I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real!

I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. And socialist, well yes, of course, it's not a fashionable word, but I am very much of the Left.

I am curious about people. I want to know their secrets... because I am the last person to whom I would tell a secret; people tell me their secrets.

I knew quite a lot about politics before I went to Parliament.

I have a soft spot for charities that help children.

We, people, are so very, very complicated that no matter how well drawn a fictional character is, they can't get anywhere near as complex as a real person.

Women's rights are more important than their ethnic rights.

I was a child, and in 1942, I was evacuated to the Cotswolds with my mother, who was a teacher - she went with her school. I lived in one house in the village, and my mother was in the vicarage.

I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden.

'The Da Vinci Code' was pretty awful. A good idea disappointingly handled.

My father had several strokes and heart attacks. I was with him when he died, and it was a horrible death. He had been a very articulate man, and to lose that, never to be able to speak properly and to be unable to move - he had always been a very vigorous man, so to be in a wheelchair and mumbling - was terrible.

The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt.

Old women especially are invisible. I have been to parties where no one knows who I am, so I am ignored until I introduce myself to someone picked at random. Immediately, word gets round, and I am surrounded by people who tell me they are my biggest fans.

I was imbued from a very early age with a sense of doom.

I - I love being told by people that they enjoy my books, and I think that's really very nice.

I agree with what Mark Twain said - we're all mad at night.

How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives?

I've never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to.

I don't choose my villains and heroes for political reasons.

Literacy is in our veins like blood. It enters every other phrase. It is next to impossible to hold a real conversation, as against an interchange of instructions and acquiescences, in which reference to the printed word is not made or in which the implications of something read do not occur.

I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.

I don't do pride. It seems to me to be a very unpleasant thing.

I'm concerned with the lost, the lonely, the shy. I think shyness is in some ways more widespread now than formerly. I used to be shy myself. Of course, you can't be me now and remain shy, but I remember very well what it felt like.

I don't know that I am fascinated with crime. I'm fascinated with people and their characters and their obsessions and what they do. And these things lead to crime, but I'm much more fascinated in their minds.

To be a classic a novel should be original.

Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens.

I have two quite large houses, and every cupboard and drawer is stuffed with books.

I don't exorcise anything with my writing. I'm sure people do, but I don't.

I do write about obsession, but I don't think I have an obsession for writing. I'm not a compulsive writer. I like to watch obsession in other people, watch the way it makes them behave.

I think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.

What I mind in modern society very much is the awful lack of grammar.

I write every morning. From about a quarter to nine to a quarter to one. It might be nine to one, or 8:30 to 12:30.

People always tell me my books are so dark; I don't think they're particularly dark. I'm not like that. I'm quite a cheerful soul.

I don't like slapdash careless prose, and if I saw myself doing it, I would give up writing altogether.

I call myself an agnostic. I'm open to change. I'm the same sort of person, although much less aggressive, as Richard Dawkins.

Everybody wants their fame. They long for it, and I think they don't much care how they get it - to attract attention to themselves.

I really am not affected by the tragic aspects of my books.

My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.

I don't make any notes, but I do know where to find things. Suppose I need to know where Wexford first talked about his love of the countryside or where he quotes Larkin or what was the beginning of his hatred of racism or where he first encountered domestic violence; I would be able to find it straight away.

People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to... especially by someone who is a good reader - it does help them to get better.

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.

I went into a church and simply said, 'Goodbye.' It is the terrible unfairness of life. How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? That is the question which finishes it for me.

I started by writing short stories, but they weren't very good; I tried them on various magazines, and none of them was published. People were nicer then about turning you down, and so I didn't lose heart - I kept on writing and wrote a lot of books, one or two of which I finished, and others I didn't.

I enjoy moving. I like to be in a new place. Settling down doesn't appeal to me much. I like the whole business of it. And I love the first night in the new place.

I think we all fear appearing foolish in public. We don't want to be laughed at.

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel pity for my psychopaths, because I do.

I very much like writing about homosexual relations. I don't quite know why. Perhaps it's because I feel there's still so much to be said about them.

Some women lose their husbands, and their worlds change because their financial circumstances change. All I have in common with them is a grief.

Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all.

My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped.

I always know what I'm going to write before I sit down.

I never was religious, really, but I'm very interested in religion.

I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility.

Many people have a profession or a job - most people do, I should think. And they do it. And that's what I did.

Wexford started off as a very conventional, tough cop and not a very original character because I had no idea I was writing a series, of course. I had no idea I'd created a series character.

I don't think the world is a particularly pleasant place.

People are still being put into geriatric wards when they don't need it. They need treatment, not just being put into bed and fed.

I think I must be the only grandmother in the world who was given an iPod by her grandsons. It has changed my life - I'd be lost without it.

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

People do sometimes ask me some really idiotic questions: 'Is your husband afraid of you putting arsenic in his food?' I replied that I have never written a book about poison, ever.

I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process.

People tell me the most extraordinary things. I've noticed it for years. Perhaps they know I won't be shocked. Or judgmental.

They say you cannot make a noise to annoy yourself.

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel sorry for my psychopaths, because I do.

I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian.

Reading taught me how to write.