“I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.” IfsFeelsRealizingNovelMissingFineCircumstancesBlueTrainChaptersCompulsionFinishingDickens Book:Rules of Civility Source: Rules of Civility
“But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.” MayCharacterSexNovelRightsCenturyConsciousRangeCharacteristicsTreatmentAffectedJaneNineteenth CenturyDickensPleadingMiddlemarch Book:Selected essays Source: Selected essays
“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 mind to keep the year free of the pressure of producing monthly installments of yet another long novel.” YearsMindLongMadeNovelSuccessfulNeededPressureTiredFebruaryDickens Author:Claire Tomalin
“Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom.” LongDifferentHumanityLevelsAttentionNovelFocusStyleInformationObjectsPeriodsLowsTasksSeekingToleranceEngagedStreamsBoredomMultipleStimulusConcentratingCognitiveHigh LevelDickensStimulationHyperSwitching Author:N. Katherine Hayles
“My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.” SpiritMotherReadingNovelInformationDickensHedonist Author:Eudora Welty
“[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.” WorldKindCountryPoliticalPresidentEnemyPovertyNovelFiveConditionsDangerousCitizensThirdsFellowsJohnsonBattlefieldsThird WorldDickensPolitical WillThird World CountriesPresident Johnson Author:Anna Quindlen
“I'm reading Barnaby Rudge, one of the less well-known Dickens novels. I've been a life-long lover of Charles Dickens ever since I think A Tale of Two Cities was the first Dickens novel I read.” ThinkingFirstsWellsLongTwoReadingCitiesKnownNovelLoversTalesWell KnownLong LifeDickensTale Of Two Cities Author:George Brandis
“The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.” MenWorldHardAgeKindnessNovelVirtueViolenceHe ManHard WorkGreedCrueltyHypocrisyExposedSanctityVictorianDickensDomestic LifeProbityVictorian Age Author:Robert Gottlieb
“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.” ChildrenMadeEndsFatherNovelCryCriedChokeDickens Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. And the great satirists, like Swift and Dickens, tend to write about abuses and injustices that have already been partially corrected - you write about it after it's over.” WritingI CanNovelChangedAbuseInjusticeDickensSatirist Author:Martin Amis
“I think poets are supposed to be writing for television and film. I grew up in the day of early TV that was so raw and funny, and I think we're in the next important moment of television, where it's really telling the epic of the culture like Charles Dickens was doing in the 19th century with his serialized novels.” ThinkingWritingImportantMomentsFilmCultureNextNovelCenturyTelevisionPoetTvsGrewGrew UpSupposed To BeEpic19th CenturyDickensImportant Moments Author:Eileen Myles
“Writing a novel- actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs- is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV's so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it's damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.” ShouldWritingLittlesPainNovelTakenImpossibleExampleTvsInternetAccountsCreditEndlessForestsAssAll TimeDamnDistractionFillingParagraphDickensRankingFilling InMutton Author:Steve Hely