Ruth Rendell Quotes

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

~ Ruth Rendell

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

~ Ruth Rendell

Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.

~ Ruth Rendell

People are different in reality from the way you've seen them while making scenarios in your mind. For one thing, they're less consistent. They surprise you all the time.

~ Ruth Rendell

I love memory sticks. They seem to me to be magic.

~ Ruth Rendell

We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.

~ Ruth Rendell

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

~ Ruth Rendell

You make someone into a object of – not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, inefectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you’ve hurt them, marked them, they’re even more sick and ugly, aren’t they? And they’re afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn’t very pleasant, but you did ask.”“Go on” he said.“So you’ve got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who’s unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that’s what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one love because they’re dirty, sovered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they’re hateful, they’re low, they’re sub-human. That’s all they’re good for, being hit, being reduced even further.

~ Ruth Rendell

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

~ Ruth Rendell

The knives of jealousy are honed on details.

~ Ruth Rendell

I never knew anyone actually buy cakes when they were hot ...

~ Ruth Rendell

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 I don't like their attitude, which, if they weren't young and therefore bright and vibrant, would be called outdated.

~ Ruth Rendell

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

~ Ruth Rendell

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.

~ Ruth Rendell

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.

~ Ruth Rendell

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.

~ Ruth Rendell

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.'

~ Ruth Rendell

What I mind in modern society very much is the awful lack of grammar.

~ Ruth Rendell