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

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

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

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

" It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Hugh Grant will always be associated with his scandal, and so will Max Mosley. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I think it says something that I have never had an obscene letter. A young man once attempted one, but it was so totally illiterate and hopeless that it made me laugh. "

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

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

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

" In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions. "

" 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 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 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. "

" 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 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'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. "

" 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. "