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" 'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me. "

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" I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid. "

Ruth Rendell

Think

Death

Every Day

" I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot. "

" 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. "

" I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories. "

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

" 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. "

" Haemophilia itself is bad enough. It is disabling day by day, even if far less incapacitating than in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the added burden of life-threatening further illnesses from contaminated NHS blood is far worse. "

" Why do we have to have violence, torture, brutality in crime dramas every time we turn on television? Any new crime drama is going to have, sooner or later, a lot of torture and nasty things that make people flinch. Lots of young people I know shrink and flinch from that kind of thing on television, so I think showing it is a mistake. "

" I don't mind being distracted. I don't want to sit there in utter silence and type. If the phone rings, I usually answer it, speak for a few minutes and return to writing, or go for a walk in and out of the rooms. I don't mind a break. "

" I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes. "

" I'm a very rigorous person. I like to take exercise. People get mired in old age, they get bent and twisted, but I can stop that. "

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

Ruth Rendell

Really

Books

" I am curious about people. I want to know their secrets... because I am the last person to whom I would tell a secret; people tell me their secrets. "

" I don't have any dark desires. And I think most people don't. A few have dark desires and don't sublimate them. "

" I don't want to be a fusty old lady writer. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

" I don't choose my villains and heroes for political reasons. "

" 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

Crime

Tired

" I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Ruth Rendell

Book

Searching

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

" I don't care for people who are given peerages who have paid for them. I think it happens, and I don't like that. "

" I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist. "

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

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

" Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives. "

Ruth Rendell

Live

Fear