Dickens Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• 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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• I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces.

  Anne Rice

  Teacher, Mentor, Driving

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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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• If you want to study writing, read Dickens

  Shelby Foote

  Writing, Want, Study

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• It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw 'The Outsiders', I knew better. It was the first time I'd realized that real people write books.

  Ally Carter

  Real, Believe, Book

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• Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

  Simon Callow

  Heart, Men, Injustice

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• I think the success of 'Downton' is partly because there are effectively 18 leading characters, all given equal importance, so it's enormously involving on many levels. But also, it's a new story. It's not like Dickens or Austen, where everyone knows the denouement.

  Michelle Dockery

  Character, Thinking, Stories

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Grief, Believe, Reading

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• The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Character, Frustration, America

  Archibald MacLeish (1978). “Riders on the Earth: essays and recollections”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• What I find really attractive is something that's going to be a little dangerous. Something that might get me into trouble; you know, you turn up in London and you've just rewritten Dickens. And, of course, then you think, 'What have I done?

  Peter Carey

  Thinking, Done, Littles

  "Peter Carey: making it up as he goes along" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2012.

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• I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries.

  Jane Birkin

  Taken, World, Misery

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• I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

  Jane Smiley

  Book, Writing, Breathing

  Jane Smiley (2014). “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. "Nothing further Jeeves", I said with quiet dignity.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Jeeves, Dignity, Quiet

  P.G. Wodehouse (2009). “The Inimitable Jeeves: (Jeeves & Wooster)”, p.210, Random House

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• A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

  Tony Kushner

  Uncles, Drama, Heart

  "Tony Kushner: 'At first I was horrified'". Interview with Michael Billington, www.theguardian.com. August 15, 2011.

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• Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning

  Michael Swanwick

  Character, Mean, Hands

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• Born Losers is a beautiful piece of writing. Scott Sandage is history's Dickens; his bleak house, the late nineteenth century world of almost anonymous American men who failed. With wit and sympathy, Sandage illuminates the grey world of credit evaluation, a little studied smothering arm of capitalism. This is history as it should be, a work of art exploring the social cost of our past.

  William S. McFeely

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• When I was 14 or 15, our teacher introduced us to Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' It was just for entertainment - we read it aloud - and all of a sudden it became a treasure.

  Dermot Healy

  Teacher, Cities, Two

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• Movement was the essence of Manhattan. It had always been so, and now its sense of flow, energy, openness, elasticity as Charles Dickens had called it, was headier than ever. Half the city’s skill and aspirations seemed to go into the propagation of motion.

  Jan Morris

  Essence, Skills, Cities

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• I would happily storm hell in the company of these troops ... how strongly they have demonstrated to the world that free men and women can fight like the dickens.

  James Mattis

  Inspirational, Courage, War

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• If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

  Dustin Hoffman

  Husband, Nice, Caring

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• Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.

  Ben Okri

  Country, Character, Ghetto

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• I doubt if Dickens did, especially his women-his pretty women-Mrs. Dombey, Florence, Dora, Agnes, Ruth Pinch, Kate Nickleby, little Emily-we know them all through Hablot Browne alone-and none of them present any very marked physical characteristics. They are sweet and graceful, neither tall nor short; they have a pretty droop in their shoulders, and are very ladylike; sometimes they wear ringlets, sometimes not, and each would do very easily for the other.

  George du Maurier

  Sweet, Pretty Woman, Doubt

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• William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles and Tolstoy told of tragedies and of people in trouble. Terence and Mark Twain told cosmic stories, Dickens told melodramatic ones, Plutarch told histories and Hans Christian Andersen told fairy tales. But Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, history, melodrama, adventure, love stories and fairy tales – and each of them so well that they have become immortal. In all the world of storytelling he has become the greatest name.

  Marchette Chute

  Christian, War, Adventure

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• Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel. The author's screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. The emerging maniacal personality, revealed in increasingly gruesome and venomous detail, rivals the Ripper.Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. Brace yourself.

  William Bernhardt

  Earthquakes, San Francisco, Personality

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