All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

- Claire Tomalin

Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune.

- 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 years.

- Claire Tomalin

The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.

- Claire Tomalin

Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biograp…

- Claire Tomalin

I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.

- Claire Tomalin

As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his mi…

- Claire Tomalin

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

- Claire Tomalin

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.

- Claire Tomalin