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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Dickens is always full of surprises. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" '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. "

" Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance. "

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

" 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. "

" Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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