Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" Dickens was very practical and sensible. "

" Dickens belongs to the English people. "

" Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

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