A Quote by Ruth Rendell

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. — © Ruth Rendell
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.
My favorite six letter word is always because it promises so much. My favorite five letter word is never because it insists on contradicting the promise. My favorite four letter word is once because it says it happened then. My favorite three letter word is yes because I’m just now learning to say it to my heart. My favorite two letter word is if because it makes all things possible like this: If not always If not never Then once. Yes.
A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if you stop to smell the roses, you'll get hit by a truck.
A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if you stop to smell the roses, you'll get hit by a truck.'
I love to be in New York. And I think anybody who's a designer, who says they're doing an urban collection, thinks about the streets of New York. I cannot do an urban collection thinking of Bangkok. Or Mexico. To me, it's totally instant, totally connected with what attracts me these days. But this resurgence of a modern, cool way of being dressed is something that stimulates me and is totally right for me. Even now I don't like to show something that is some futuristic utopia.
When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, 'Sexiest Man Alive,' I'm honestly going, 'Thank you. Right on.' For me, it's never canceled out anything, it's never made me go, 'Does this make me less talented of an actor?'
I made sure that instead of people making fun of me, like every comedian probably says, I made fun of myself first so they would get distracted and just laugh. I was pretty brutally picked on for a while growing up. It was always the really pretty girls, the hot girls and then there was me. So I had to do something to get any sort of attention.
When you have to write a letter, you're automatically put into a state of composure and a kind of formality. You can't help it. So, no, I never once got a letter where someone just popped off at me.
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever - unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.
Once you realize you can make people laugh, it's a superpower. When you're really young, you don't know how to use that power, so I would just say the meanest things I could to get a laugh. I was so awful. I would make fun of kids who didn't deserve to get made fun of. I was just mean, when I was really young. You don't realize that you don't have to be mean to be funny. But, it was something that I was just able to grow into.
A man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film.
I once had a letter from a man who asked to do something very weird. He told me he wanted to sit on my shoulders and for me to then walk around his town to raise money for charity. He described himself as being 6ft and I was thinking, 'I'm only 5ft 4in, and you want to sit on my shoulders?' How bizarre.
He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.
You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.
I had to fight to be me and get respect, and to carry that stigma, for me, is pride. Carrying the tag of lesbian. I'm not bragging, I'm not preaching, but I don't deny it . I had to face society, the Church, which says damn gay people ... it's absurd. How do you judge someone who has been born that way. I did not study to be a lesbian. Neither was it taught to me. I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world. I've never slept with a man. Never. I'm pure, I don't have to be ashamed ... My Gods made me so.
[God] arranged that the boy Samuel should be chosen but instead of teaching him directly He had him turn once or twice to an old man. This youngster, to whom He had granted a direct encounter with Himself, had nevertheless to go for instruction to someone who had offended God, and all because that person was an old man. He decided that Samuel was most worthy of a high calling and yet He made him submit to the guidance of an old man so that once summoned to a divine ministry he might learn humility and might himself become for all the young a model of deference.
Lord Maccon believed that if his trousers were on his legs, and something else was on his torso, he was dressed. The less done after that, the better. His wife had been startled to find that in the summertime, he actually went around their room barefoot! Once -- and only once, mind you -- he even attempted to join her for tea in such a state. Impossible man. Alexia put a stop to that posthaste.
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