Claire Tomalin People Quotations

You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.

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

All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

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.

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.

I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.

I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century.

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.