Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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… — 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 thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest,… — 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
