Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In 'The Blood Doctor,' I wrote about the history of haemophilia and the devastating effects of the disease at a time when there was no remedy. "

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" It's absolutely essential to my life. I don't know what I would do if I didn't write. "

" I'm not much of an eater. "

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

" 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 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 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. "

" People want to marry me for companionship. No thanks! I've got my cats for that! "

" 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 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 have a soft spot for charities that help children. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" The treatment of patients with contaminated blood has been described as one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the NHS. "

" 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 never write about a place I don't know. "

" 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. "

" 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'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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare. "

" 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. "