Claire Tomalin Quotes & Sayings (Page 6)

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

“The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.”

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

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

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

“Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”