I don't think the Barbara Vines are mysteries in any sense. The Barbara Vine is much more slowly paced. It is a much more in-depth, searching sort of book; it doesn't necessarily have a murder in it.
— 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.
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.
You don't knock television, even if you don't always like what they make of your work. It makes all the difference between being an also-ran writer and very famous.
Some women lose their husbands, and their worlds change because their financial circumstances change. All I have in common with them is a grief.
I'm a very rigorous person. I like to take exercise. People get mired in old age, they get bent and twisted, but I can stop that.
Violence is very much with us, and we like to see it. I doubt if you can change that, and I'm not sure you should want to. I have occasionally been very upset by something I was writing, but it's quite rare: I keep my writing very separate from my life.
I don't have any dark desires. And I think most people don't. A few have dark desires and don't sublimate them.
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.
I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.
Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens.
I am interested in names and what they say; it is true. I like to look at the columns of baby names in the newspapers. But I don't run out of new ones for my characters.
I used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them.
I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist.
I agree with what Mark Twain said - we're all mad at night.
I knew quite a lot about politics before I went to Parliament.
I have a soft spot for charities that help children.
I don't know that I am fascinated with crime. I'm fascinated with people and their characters and their obsessions and what they do. And these things lead to crime, but I'm much more fascinated in their minds.
I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes.
Many people have a profession or a job - most people do, I should think. And they do it. And that's what I did.
As soon as I know it's about technological things or spies, I lose interest. I want to know what goes on in people's minds.
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.
Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all.
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.
I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.
I - I love being told by people that they enjoy my books, and I think that's really very nice.
Wexford started off as a very conventional, tough cop and not a very original character because I had no idea I was writing a series, of course. I had no idea I'd created a series character.
I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.
I don't choose my villains and heroes for political reasons.
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.
It sounds awful and sort of goody two-shoes, but I never eat between meals.
I don't mind being distracted.
I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.
In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.
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.
I've never really been satisfied with a book. I always want it to be better.
I think it says something that I have never had an obscene letter. A young man once attempted one, but it was so totally illiterate and hopeless that it made me laugh.
I love memory sticks. They seem to me to be magic.
Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke.
I don't do pride. It seems to me to be a very unpleasant thing.
I don't exorcise anything with my writing. I'm sure people do, but I don't.
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.
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.
I've never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to.
It's absolutely essential to my life. I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.
I get very tired of violence in crime fiction. Maybe it is what life is like, but I don't want to do it in my books.
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 always know what I'm going to write before I sit down.
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.
I do write about obsession, but I don't think I have an obsession for writing. I'm not a compulsive writer. I like to watch obsession in other people, watch the way it makes them behave.
