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

Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.

I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.

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

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.

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.

Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.

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

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.

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

The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.

Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.

Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the tireless walker. The radical, the protector of orphans, helper of the needy, man of good works, the republican. The hater and the lover of America. The giver of parties, the magician, the traveler.

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

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

Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.

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.

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

I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.

When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature.

Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.