The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine.
— Ruth Rendell
In 'The Blood Doctor,' I wrote about the history of haemophilia and the devastating effects of the disease at a time when there was no remedy.
I'm not much of a shoe person, but I love a pair by Bruno Magli that I've had for 10 years.
I get up just before six and come downstairs, put food out for the cats, and open the cat flap. Then I work out for 35 or 40 minutes - I have a very large bathroom with an elliptical cross-trainer and a bicycle.
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'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. And socialist, well yes, of course, it's not a fashionable word, but I am very much of the Left.
I don't mind being distracted. I don't want to sit there in utter silence and type. If the phone rings, I usually answer it, speak for a few minutes and return to writing, or go for a walk in and out of the rooms. I don't mind a break.
People tell me the most extraordinary things. I've noticed it for years. Perhaps they know I won't be shocked. Or judgmental.
I don't expect the sun to be always shining, or even want that to happen.
I have never been a foodie and am seldom very hungry.
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 never was religious, really, but I'm very interested in religion.
Reading taught me how to write.
There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.
I have two quite large houses, and every cupboard and drawer is stuffed with books.
I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'
Some women say as they get older they're no longer noticed: they disappear. Men, for instance, don't see them. Nobody wants them. That doesn't happen to me because of who I am. Not because I'm any more scintillating company, but because I'm Ruth Rendell.
I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.
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 didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.
Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language.
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 think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.
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.
I like to show what happens to people in the past and how it affects their present.
I enjoy moving. I like to be in a new place. Settling down doesn't appeal to me much. I like the whole business of it. And I love the first night in the new place.
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.
I don't care for people who are given peerages who have paid for them. I think it happens, and I don't like that.
I'm careful about keeping myself fit and thin, or as thin as I can manage.
I don't want to be a fusty old lady writer.
It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.
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.
I went into a church and simply said, 'Goodbye.' It is the terrible unfairness of life. How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? That is the question which finishes it for me.
I am neurotic, but I live with it. I think most people are, anyway.
The treatment of patients with contaminated blood has been described as one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the NHS.
It looks as if the NHS will gradually fade away, and we shall go back to a great deal of private medicine.
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.
I think I must be the only grandmother in the world who was given an iPod by her grandsons. It has changed my life - I'd be lost without it.
I was imbued from a very early age with a sense of doom.
I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility.
It's not necessary with your friends to discuss something you know you will disagree profoundly on.
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 write every morning. From about a quarter to nine to a quarter to one. It might be nine to one, or 8:30 to 12:30.
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.
I never write about a place I don't know.
Where blackmail is involved, telling the police is always a good option.
I have a Kindle, but I don't like it very much. I like a book.
The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better.
People want to marry me for companionship. No thanks! I've got my cats for that!
