Zitat des Tages von Claire Tomalin:
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century.
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
My life was a sort of series of random disasters.
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
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.
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.
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.
Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.
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.
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.
One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.
I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did.
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.
I would like to have a more social life than I have.
I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.
Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.
When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature.
I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.' I remember thinking, 'That's perfect.' It was three days a week, and I had children, but I could make that work - so I applied for it and got it.
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.
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.
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.
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.
Dickens is always full of surprises.
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction.
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.
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published.
'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.