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" The knives of jealousy are honed on details. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" Reading taught me how to write. "

" 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. "

" I'm not much of an eater. "

" I don't mind being distracted. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine. "

" I - I love being told by people that they enjoy my books, and I think that's really very nice. "

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

" I was imbued from a very early age with a sense of doom. "

" 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. "

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

" I always write about what interests me. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? "

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

" Some women lose their husbands, and their worlds change because their financial circumstances change. All I have in common with them is a grief. "

" It sounds awful and sort of goody two-shoes, but I never eat between meals. "