Zitat des Tages von Ruth Rendell:
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.
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.
I have a soft spot for charities that help children.
I've had two proposals since I've been a widow. I am a wonderful catch, you know. I have a lot of money.
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.
I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care: I rewrite a lot. If anything is sort of clumsy and not possible to read aloud to oneself, which I think one should do... it doesn't work.
My mother had multiple sclerosis.
I don't choose my villains and heroes for political reasons.
I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel pity for my psychopaths, because I do.
The treatment of patients with contaminated blood has been described as one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the NHS.
I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian.
It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.
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'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 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 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.
My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.
I don't do pride. It seems to me to be a very unpleasant thing.
I am neurotic, but I live with it. I think most people are, anyway.
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.
I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility.
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 don't expect the sun to be always shining, or even want that to happen.
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.
My father had several strokes and heart attacks. I was with him when he died, and it was a horrible death. He had been a very articulate man, and to lose that, never to be able to speak properly and to be unable to move - he had always been a very vigorous man, so to be in a wheelchair and mumbling - was terrible.
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.
The knives of jealousy are honed on details.
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 think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid.
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.
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 call myself an agnostic. I'm open to change. I'm the same sort of person, although much less aggressive, as Richard Dawkins.
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 think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.
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.
I never was religious, really, but I'm very interested in religion.