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

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

" I always try to travel light. "

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

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

" Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. "

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

" 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'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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" The book doesn't end when you finish writing 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'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster. "

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

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

" Dickens is always full of surprises. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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