Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

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

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

" 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. "

" I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends. "

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I always try to travel light. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "