Dickens Quotes - Page 2

• Most of us wait until we're in trouble, and then we pray like the dickens. Wonder what would happen if, some morning, we'd wake up and say, "Anything I can do for You today, Lord?"

  Bill Vaughan

  God, Morning, Waiting

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• I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You're saying I'm not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that.

  Ricky Gervais

  Thinking, Office, Special

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• It struck me that the popularity of Christmas is a matter of web-like consciousness. Childhood conditions us to relax and expand at Christmas, to forget petty worries and irritations and think in terms of universal peace. And so Christmas is the nearest to mystical experience that most human beings ever approach, with its memories of Dickens and Irving's Bracebridge Hall.

  Colin Wilson

  Christmas, Memories, Thinking

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• An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.

  Andrew Davies

  Son, Adaptation, Has Beens

  "Andrew Davies: BBC period drama is 'going downmarket'" by Leigh Holmwood, www.theguardian.com. September 29, 2009.

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• 150 years ago in [Charles] Dickens's time there was at least a sense of craft. So some of the things people had inside of them, they had the possibility of expressing in the making of things - even in a daily way with their clothes or their food. People made a good deal of both themselves. Now our daily lives are almost all consumption. Craft plays a tiny role.

  Zadie Smith

  Clothes, Years, Play

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

  Ben Okri

  Home, Literature, London

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• There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.

  Dylan Moran

  Voice, Literature, Singers

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• My favourite authors include Trollope and Dickens.

  Kevin McCloud

  Favourite

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• My father read Charles Dickens to us as children, and at the end of virtually every novel he would choke up and start to cry - and my father NEVER cried. It always made me love him all the more.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Children, Father, Cry

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• When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

  Alan King

  Father, Firsts, Oppression

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• No self-respecting feminist could argue with the claim that the novel is more likely to accept existing power structures than not. But there's a vast difference, surely, between Dickens saying Indians should be exterminated and a Dave Eggers writing eloquently about the NSA, but not being as outspoken on American military power abroad.

  Kamila Shamsie

  Military, Writing, Self

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I didn't really get London until I read Dickens. Then I was charmed to death by it.

  Feist

  London, Charmed

  "Feist: 'I was basically raised by the Muppets'". Interview with Gareth Grundy, www.theguardian.com. December 4, 2010.

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• One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

  Danny Boyle

  Cities, Growth, London

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, film.avclub.com. November 26, 2008.

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• We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

  Alan Bennett

  Children, Cheesy, Humanity

  Old Country (1978) act 2

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• Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

  Margaret Atwood

  Once Upon A Time, Novelists, Century

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• Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

  Maya Angelou

  Mean, Men, Rude

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• I studied English literature at university, but for some reason we only spent one week on [Charles] Dickens, so I remember just trying to find the shortest book that I could find. I was like, "'Hard Times,' really great - it's short, that'll do it."

  Felicity Jones

  Book, Hard Times, Trying

  Source: www.shockya.com

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• Favorite books and authors while growing up - I'd need a book to list them all. For the sake of brevity: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, world's mythology, the Arthurian legends. And the unabridged dictionary. And they're still my favorites. They get better each time I read them.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Growing Up, Book, Get Better

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

  Tom Peters

  Book, People, Fiction

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• I can't imagine how American readers will react to a novel, but if the story is appealing it doesn't matter much if you don't catch all the detail. I'm not too familiar with the geography of nineteenth century London, for instance, but I still enjoy reading Dickens.

  Haruki Murakami

  Reading, Matter, Details

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

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• I think that when [Charles] Dickens met Nelly [Ternan] it unleashed this sort of carnal, anarchic, cruel energy within him, and literally after she met him he changed his whole life - he separated from [his wife] Catherine, he stopped all the children from seeing her and went on this bitter rampage.

  Felicity Jones

  Children, Thinking, Wife

  Source: www.shockya.com

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• As I've gotten older I've become a devotee of 19th-century authors, such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

  David Duchovny

  Century, Eliot, Devotee

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.

  Felicity Jones

  Thinking, Virginia, Joyce

  Source: www.shockya.com

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• We live in a culture that insists on "moving on" (even while our loyalty to and love of the franchise and the sequel give away a larger loopiness). But I tend to dwell or obsess or meditate, and I came back to, for instance, the figure of Dickens's "Miss Havisham" with some (self) recognition if not relief.

  Laura Mullen

  Loyalty, Moving, Self

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.

  Martin Scorsese

  East, World, London

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