Claire Tomalin Quotes
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I've behaved badly in my life. I hope I haven't behaved as badly as Dickens! In a way, if you're a woman, you're not in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.
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I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book.
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The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
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By the time I went up to Cambridge, I was extremely quiet and well behaved, although I now meet people who remember me as not like that at all.
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In 2007, several musicologists contacted me at about the same time, expressing interest in the work of the mysterious Muriel Herbert, a few of whose songs they had come across.
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I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.
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The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
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It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
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Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.
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Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.
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Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.
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If I'm in a state about a book, I'll get up at 6 A.M. and write before breakfast, but usually I'll start afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.
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I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.
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Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance.
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Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.
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Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
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When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die. It's strange to feel so omniscient.
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Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.
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Dickens is always full of surprises.
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Dickens belongs to the English people.
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Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I'm trying to write.
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As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.
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Dickens was very practical and sensible.
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Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.