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

I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.

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

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

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

I always write about what interests me.

I do think that being a sort of celebrity and being well off does give me some responsibility. I think that people who make a lot of money - and I do - should certainly give a considerable amount of it away.

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.

I don't think the world is a particularly pleasant place.

I'm not much of an eater.

I have a soft spot for charities that help children.

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.

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

I knew quite a lot about politics before I went to Parliament.

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 don't mind being distracted.

I always know what I'm going to write before I sit down.

It sounds awful and sort of goody two-shoes, but I never eat between meals.

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 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.

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 don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.

Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens.

I've never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to.

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 feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.

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 - I love being told by people that they enjoy my books, and I think that's really very nice.

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.

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.

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 don't exorcise anything with my writing. I'm sure people do, but I don't.

I don't do pride. It seems to me to be a very unpleasant 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.

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.

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

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.

Many people have a profession or a job - most people do, I should think. And they do it. And that's what I did.

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.