Ruth Rendell Quotes

By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.

What I like about writing a stand alone novel is you're starting with a fresh world and fresh characters. Part of what I love about writing is that journey of discovery where it's all new to me as well.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

I really love storytelling, and I love the stories as they reveal themselves. It's an incredibly nourishing process; it's probably the closest I come to having a religion.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

Every story is different, so what is a detail in one might not be in something else. Diversity is something I embrace and love about my work.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

The puppet characters were combinations of people I had known and to some degree aspects of my own personality. Weird was based on someone I knew in Chicago. Dirty Dragon was based on a good friend I had in Indianapolis.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

There are a few really fantastic stories left, and that kind of gives you some inspiration to find even new ones.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.