Claire Tomalin

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

All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.

I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did.

It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.

When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming.

Dickens was very practical and sensible.

I always try to travel light.

'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else.

'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can't cheat.

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

I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts.

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

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

Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.

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 afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends.

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

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