Ruth Rendell Quotes

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

'The Good Earth' is a great book.

Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

I have seen and really liked the varied movie adaptations of the book, but 'Little Women' has a sprawling, richly tangled story that needs time and space to weave its magic.

There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas.

What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.

Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book.

When I read 'The Master', I felt that I had read a true classic. It's so rare nowadays that you have that feeling: it was a privilege to read it.

Whatever was said about Ralph Ellison, 'Invisible Man' was considered untouchable.

The most valuable writers are those in whom we find not themselves, or ourselves, or the fugitive era of their lifetimes, but the common vision of all times.

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.

We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.

Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day?

What I try to do with any of my stories, any of my novels, is make them feel very original.

A good novel cannot be too long or a bad novel too short.

A Marxist has never written a good novel.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

The classic literature is always modern.

Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

I suppose I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something.

How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.