I don’t want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn’t want to marry a bad novelist.
I don’t have any dark desires. And I think most people don’t. A few have dark desires and don’t sublimate them.
It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.
I’ve never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to.
I don’t think the world is a particularly pleasant place.
I think that people who make a lot of money – and I do – should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.
I don’t think the Barbara Vines are mysteries in any sense. The Barbara Vine is much more slowly paced. It is a much more in-depth, searching sort of book; it doesn’t necessarily have a murder in it.
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.
I get up just before six and come downstairs, put food out for the cats, and open the cat flap. Then I work out for 35 or 40 minutes – I have a very large bathroom with an elliptical cross-trainer and a bicycle.
I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point.
I really do literally put myself into a character’s shoes.
I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility.
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.
I’m not much of a shoe person, but I love a pair by Bruno Magli that I’ve had for 10 years.
‘The Da Vinci Code’ was pretty awful. A good idea disappointingly handled.
Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.
Women’s rights are more important than their ethnic rights.
I never write about a place I don’t know.
I always know what I’m going to write before I sit down.
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 don’t exorcise anything with my writing. I’m sure people do, but I don’t.
I have a Kindle, but I don’t like it very much. I like a book.
I love memory sticks. They seem to me to be magic.
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