Ruth Rendell Quotes

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Ruth Rendell

Profession : Writer

Birth : February 17, 1930

The treatment of patients with contaminated blood has been described as one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the NHS.

Ruth Rendell

I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden.

Ruth Rendell

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel pity for my psychopaths, because I do.

Ruth Rendell

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

Ruth Rendell

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

Ruth Rendell

I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.

Ruth Rendell

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

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

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

Ruth Rendell

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

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

I really am not affected by the tragic aspects of my books.

Ruth Rendell

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

Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity, and that strikes terror into the heart of people who love reading.

Ruth Rendell

Why do we have to have violence, torture, brutality in crime dramas every time we turn on television? Any new crime drama is going to have, sooner or later, a lot of torture and nasty things that make people flinch. Lots of young people I know shrink and flinch from that kind of thing on television, so I think showing it is a mistake.

Ruth Rendell

'The Da Vinci Code' was pretty awful. A good idea disappointingly handled.

Ruth Rendell

I think we all fear appearing foolish in public. We don't want to be laughed at.

Ruth Rendell

Hugh Grant will always be associated with his scandal, and so will Max Mosley.

Ruth Rendell

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

Ruth Rendell

I always write about what interests me.

Ruth Rendell