Jimmy Dickens was the essence of country music and the heart of the Grand Ole Opry.
I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
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.
I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story.
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.
But since doing the film ["The Invisible Woman"] I've really learned to appreciate [Charles Dickens], he's phenomenal. "Great Expectations" would be one of my favorites.
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.
Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . . he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.
I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.
I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence.
I read an awful lot in college - a lot of Dickens, a lot of 19th century American stuff, a lot of old mysteries. Maybe it's helped me attain a certain fluidity with my style.
According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.
I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.
A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.
Taking the humour out of Dickens, it's not Dickens any more.
I didn't really get London until I read Dickens. Then I was charmed to death by it.
My favourite authors include Trollope and Dickens.
Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.
I claim Dickens as a mentor. He's my teacher. He's one of my driving forces.
