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" I don't want to be a fusty old lady writer. "
Ruth Rendell
Old
Want
Writer
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" 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. "
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Book
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You
" I've had two proposals since I've been a widow. I am a wonderful catch, you know. I have a lot of money. "
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Wonderful
Two
" I love memory sticks. They seem to me to be magic. "
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Seem
Me
Magic
" I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real! "
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Me
Character
Who
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Good
Better
Help
" I - I love being told by people that they enjoy my books, and I think that's really very nice. "
Ruth Rendell
Nice
Books
Enjoy
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Good
Her
Love
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Guilt
Father
Business
" I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. "
Ruth Rendell
Women
Up
Must
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Got
Only
Reason
" My mother had multiple sclerosis. "
Ruth Rendell
Multiple
Had
Mother
" I don't like slapdash careless prose, and if I saw myself doing it, I would give up writing altogether. "
Ruth Rendell
Doing
Give
Myself
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Death
Heart
Man
" I'm careful about keeping myself fit and thin, or as thin as I can manage. "
Ruth Rendell
Myself
Manage
I Can
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
My Life
Life
Change
" I don't know what I would do if I didn't write. "
Ruth Rendell
Know
Write
Would
" I get very tired of violence in crime fiction. Maybe it is what life is like, but I don't want to do it in my books. "
Ruth Rendell
Like
Crime
Tired
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Women
I Am
Me
" I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next. "
Ruth Rendell
Believe
Important
You
" I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes. "
Ruth Rendell
Carry
London
Good
" I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. "
Ruth Rendell
Am
Bad
Very
" Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke. "
Ruth Rendell
Had
Stroke
Parents
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Short
Work
Future
" I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden. "
Ruth Rendell
Terrible
Want
Think
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Teacher
School
She
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Never
You
Different
" I always write about what interests me. "
Ruth Rendell
Interests
About
Write
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
Writing
Original
Tough
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
I Am
Women
Random
" 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. "
Ruth Rendell
God
Goodbye
Me