I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes.

I've never really been satisfied with a book. I always want it to be better.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

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

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 don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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