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. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
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. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity, and that strikes terror into the heart of people who love reading. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
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. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
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. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
People are still being put into geriatric wards when they don’t need it. They need treatment, not just being put into bed and fed. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
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. Ruth Rendell Read Quote
