Simon Callow Quotes

I'm not a Dickens guy. In grad school I had to take at least one course on the Victorians, so I took The Later Dickens, because that was what there was.

I read a lot when I was at college, but really, only a few of Dickens's books work for me.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks - who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

I admire Dickens beyond words. He is one of the greatest plotters of all times. Didn't have a clue about women, but he sure could plot.

When it comes to referring to Dickens's life, performing plays with your nine children for friends and family during Christmas is Dickensian.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

Dickens is always full of surprises.

Dickens writes such brilliant characters and stories, and his themes and social commentary are still so relevant. I think that's why he's still so loved today.

At university, one of my areas of study was Victorian literature, so I decided to see if I could write a novel as carefully planned and constructed as those of George Eliot, but with the narrative energy of Dickens.

Considering what a prolific writer Dickens was, the word 'Dickensian' could legitimately cover a vast thematic territory, explaining at least some of the variety of its applications.

As an artist, my wheelhouse is 19th-century literature. I want to write realist novels in a Victorian sense, and the writers I admire in that style tend to do omniscient narration.

I grew up in Nagpur, and I first started enjoying the author Harishankar Parsai. He wrote mostly satire, essays on the current situation and social issues. He wrote many books and I think he was my first influence.

Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival; his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.

I've recently rediscovered Anthony Trollope. I used to read him back in college, and a friend turned me on to a whole new series of his work, 'The Palliser Series.' It's a series of seven or eight books.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

I am a big devourer of James Baldwin.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

I love Martin Amis.

Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

I have read a number of books, starting with novels, that I particularly liked.

One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.