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" 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. "

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

Claire Tomalin

Events

Time

Historians

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

Claire Tomalin

Been

Book

" Dickens belongs to the English people. "

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

Claire Tomalin

Closest

About

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Dickens is always full of surprises. "

" 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. "

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

Claire Tomalin

World

Energy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

Claire Tomalin

Same

Time

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

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