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

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

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

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

" Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens. So I can do that. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. "

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

" 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. "

" I like to show what happens to people in the past and how it affects their present. "

" The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better. "

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

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

" I wouldn't be young again even if it were possible, but I am not going to pretend that growing old is all sweetness and light. "

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

" 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. "

" I go to the House of Lords in the afternoon and try to walk halfway. I may be thinking about what I'm going to write. It's much more satisfying than sitting in a chair. "

" I've never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm careful about keeping myself fit and thin, or as thin as I can manage. "

" I've had two proposals since I've been a widow. I am a wonderful catch, you know. I have a lot of money. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "