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" Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs. "

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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. "

" Dickens was very practical and sensible. "

" 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 would like to have a more social life than I have. "

" I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century. "

" 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. "

" My life was a sort of series of random disasters. "

" 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. "

" Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance. "

" I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious. "

" I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts. "

" All writers behave badly. All people behave badly. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad. "

" I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else. "

" 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. "

" Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples. "

" I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book. "

" 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. "

" Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the tireless walker. The radical, the protector of orphans, helper of the needy, man of good works, the republican. The hater and the lover of America. The giver of parties, the magician, the traveler. "

" The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny. "

" 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 have been left-wing always, from childhood. "

" Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings. "

" 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. "

" After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters. "