Quotes from 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.

I've never really been satisfied with a book. I always want it to be better.

I'm not much of a shoe person, but I love a pair by Bruno Magli that I've had for 10 years.

People always tell me my books are so dark; I don't think they're particularly dark. I'm not like that. I'm quite a cheerful soul.

My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped.

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

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

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 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.

I don't expect the sun to be always shining, or even want that to happen.

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

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.

The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account.

It's living - a broad spectrum of living - that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think.

I don't think the world is a particularly pleasant place.

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.

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 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.

I've done the big 12-city tours, and I'm never going to do that again - never. I was younger then. It wears you out, you know.

People do sometimes ask me some really idiotic questions: 'Is your husband afraid of you putting arsenic in his food?' I replied that I have never written a book about poison, ever.

Where blackmail is involved, telling the police is always a good option.

I think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.

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 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.