Claire Tomalin Life Quotations

Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.

My life was a sort of series of random disasters.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.