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

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

" Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading. "

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

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

" '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. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Dickens belongs to the English people. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people. "

" Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies. "

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

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

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

" Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner. "

" 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. "