Claire Tomalin

“Poor Nelly, she was not to know that fashions in sin change as much as other fashions.”

— Claire Tomalin

I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book.

— Claire Tomalin

I would like to have a more social life than I have.

— Claire Tomalin

I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published.

— Claire Tomalin

I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the…

— 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,…

— Claire Tomalin

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.

— Claire Tomalin

I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in…

— Claire Tomalin

Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my…

— Claire Tomalin

Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.

— 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.

— Claire Tomalin

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

— Claire Tomalin

Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as…

— Claire Tomalin

Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.

— Claire Tomalin

It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.

— Claire Tomalin

I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.

— Claire Tomalin

My life was a sort of series of random disasters.

— Claire Tomalin

All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.

— 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,…

— Claire Tomalin

Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.

— Claire Tomalin

The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you:…

— Claire Tomalin

As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians…

— Claire Tomalin

When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the…

— Claire Tomalin

Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time,…

— Claire Tomalin

I've been trying to garden all my life - it just happens that I haven't had a big garden...until the past few…

— Claire Tomalin