03UndatedMaybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.Ruth Rendell / quote ↗
04UndatedPeople 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 / quote ↗
06UndatedWe 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 / quote ↗
08UndatedYou 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 / quote ↗
09UndatedTo say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.Ruth Rendell / quote ↗
12UndatedI 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 I don't like their attitude, which, if they weren't young and therefore bright and vibrant, would be called outdated.Ruth Rendell / quote ↗
13UndatedI always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.Ruth Rendell / quote ↗
14UndatedYou 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 / quote ↗
15UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
16UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
17UndatedI'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 / quote ↗
