A biography for Claire Tomalinhasn’t been written yet.
“Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.”
“Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.”
“All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.”
“I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.”
“After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.”
“I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.”
“Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.”
“You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.”
“He could take on anything and everything, it seemed, rather than leave himself time to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his life and what he might do about it.”
“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.”
“Dickens belongs to the English people.”
“Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.”
“My life was a sort of series of random disasters.”