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

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" 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. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

" 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 belongs to the English people. "

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

" When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

" People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels. "

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

" 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 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. "

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