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" 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. "

Claire Tomalin

My Life

Hope

Power

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

Claire Tomalin

Closest

About

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

Claire Tomalin

Dickens

Writing

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

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

" Dickens was very practical and sensible. "

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

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

" 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. "

Claire Tomalin

Quiet

Meet

" 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. "

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

" 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. "