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 Copy Share Image
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time,… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
By the time I went up to Cambridge, I was extremely quiet and well behaved, although I now meet people who remember… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
“Poor Nelly, she was not to know that fashions in sin change as much as other fashions.” — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.'… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
