Top 72 Quotes by Claire Tomalin

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 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.

Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.

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

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

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

Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.

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.

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.

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