I was imbued from a very early age with a sense of doom.

Where blackmail is involved, telling the police is always a good option.

I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist.

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 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 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.

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.

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 used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them.

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'm concerned with the lost, the lonely, the shy. I think shyness is in some ways more widespread now than formerly. I used to be shy myself. Of course, you can't be me now and remain shy, but I remember very well what it felt like.

I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real!

How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives?

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 have two quite large houses, and every cupboard and drawer is stuffed with books.

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.

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.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'

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.

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 am neurotic, but I live with it. I think most people are, anyway.

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.

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.