Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Dickens belongs to the English people. "

Related Quotes:

" '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. "

" It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration. "

" Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films. "

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

" The book doesn't end when you finish writing it. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be. "

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

" When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common. "

" It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. "

" 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 was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" Dickens was very practical and sensible. "

" I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs. "

" '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. "