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" 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. "

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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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real! "

" I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them. "

" I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. "

" It looks as if the NHS will gradually fade away, and we shall go back to a great deal of private medicine. "

" 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. "

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

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

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