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. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I’m very good at quizzes. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
I never make notes; just a few small details when I’m writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won’t plan it. I’ll speak the narrative in my head for a while. – Ruth Rendell
I very much like writing about homosexual relations. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps it’s because I feel there’s still so much to be said about them. – Ruth Rendell
I can’t sum up my books. They’re all rather complicated. Sometimes I think they’re too complicated. But that’s the way I am. When I start to write a book, my head gets full of all kinds of detail. – Ruth Rendell
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.’ – Ruth Rendell
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. – 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. – Ruth Rendell
The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt. – Ruth Rendell
It’s not necessary with your friends to discuss something you know you will disagree profoundly on. – Ruth Rendell
I don’t like the way young people write and talk about the old. I don’t like their attitude, which, if they weren’t young and therefore bright and vibrant, would be called outdated. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better. – Ruth Rendell
People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to… especially by someone who is a good reader – it does help them to get better. – Ruth Rendell
I don’t like slapdash careless prose, and if I saw myself doing it, I would give up writing altogether. – Ruth Rendell
I call myself an agnostic. I’m open to change. I’m the same sort of person, although much less aggressive, as Richard Dawkins. – Ruth Rendell
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. – Ruth Rendell
I don’t think it’s good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it. – Ruth Rendell
