Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Claire Tomalin, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Claire Tomalin quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 76 Claire Tomalin quotes for you to read and share.

Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000031498
All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000056458
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000069803
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000106198
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000106207
I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000106229
'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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000106274
Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000112852
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000129596
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000145236
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161811
I always try to travel light. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161812
Dickens belongs to the English people. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161813
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
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161814
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161815
In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161816
He could take on anything and everything, it seemed, rather than leave himself time to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his life and what he might do about it. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161817
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161818
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161819
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161820
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161821
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161822
I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161823
Dickens was very practical and sensible. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161824
I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161825
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161826
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161827
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161828
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161829
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161830
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161831
I'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161832
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161833
'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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161834
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161835
It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161836
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161837
When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161838
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161839
I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161840
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161841
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161842
I've been trying to garden all my life - it just happens that I haven't had a big garden until the past few years. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161843
Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161844
I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161845
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161846
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161847
Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161848
After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161849
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161850
Dickens is always full of surprises. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161851
The book doesn't end when you finish writing it. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161852
Poor Nelly, she was not to know that fashions in sin change as much as other fashions. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161853
Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161854
'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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161855
Being himself was more exhausting than impersonating a stage character. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161856
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161857
I would like to have a more social life than I have. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161858
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161859
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161860
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161861
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161862
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161863
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161864
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161865
Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161866
I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161867
Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161868
Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161869
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
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161870
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
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161871
I have been left-wing always, from childhood. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161872
He saw the world more vividly than other people, and reacted to what he saw with laughter, horror, indignation, and sometimes sobs. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161873
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161874
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161875
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. -- Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin Quotes : pic 000161876
My life was a sort of series of random disasters. -- Claire Tomalin