QUOTES by Claire Tomalin
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
'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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote 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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
'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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
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.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
Quote by -Claire Tomalin