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" I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40. "

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

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

" I'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster. "

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

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

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

" I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published. "

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

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

" I always try to travel light. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again. "

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

" Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans. "