Quotable Friday (44)

Following the death of Sir Terry Pratchett recently, it's already time to say goodbye to another of the UK's most-loved writers. I have to say I don't know a lot of Ruth Rendell's books, but the ones I have read or heard on the radio are brilliant. She was a fantastic crime writer, author of more than 60 books, who was still writing into her 80s.

With the General Election less than a week away and Princess Charlotte born on the same day, Ruth Rendell's death passed with less attention in the media than it might have done. In a similar way, the deaths of writers CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley went almost unremarked at the time occurring as they did on the day President Kennedy was shot. I shall leave those two for another week. For now, here is a rather simple and lovely view of marriage from Ruth Rendell:

"Maybe being married is talking to oneself, with one's other self listening."

And I also loved this take on having an ally in the world - I think it applies to spouses and best friends alike:

"There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one."

Perhaps neither of those quotations are typical of a crime writer, but they were the ones I liked best!