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Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.
Claire Tomalin -
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.
Claire Tomalin
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Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.
Claire Tomalin -
When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common.
Claire Tomalin -
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.
Claire Tomalin -
I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.
Claire Tomalin -
'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can't cheat.
Claire Tomalin -
My life was a sort of series of random disasters.
Claire Tomalin
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I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
Claire Tomalin -
The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It's a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There's nowhere else like it.
Claire Tomalin -
As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his mind to keep the year free of the pressure of producing monthly installments of yet another long novel.
Claire Tomalin -
I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of Mary Wollstonecraft: there was a lunch, a contract, a small sum of money, then nothing.
Claire Tomalin -
The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.
Claire Tomalin -
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
Claire Tomalin
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In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.
Claire Tomalin -
I would like to have a more social life than I have.
Claire Tomalin -
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century.
Claire Tomalin -
I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.
Claire Tomalin -
I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.
Claire Tomalin -
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published.
Claire Tomalin
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I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts.
Claire Tomalin -
I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.
Claire Tomalin -
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.
Claire Tomalin -
'A Christmas Carol' has been described as the most perfect of Dickens's works and as a quintessential heart-warming story, and it is certainly the most popular.
Claire Tomalin