Claire Tomalin Quotes

Being a writer is an endless study in human transition and lessons learned or forgotten or misapplied.

I think I'm very interested in people, in the way our minds work and how we navigate through the experience that is life. Very interested in people's struggles and their choices and their regrets and joys. I'm very interested in the human animal.

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

I would be the worst person on earth to be called to write an account of someone else's life.

I needed time to stand back and go through a lot more experience in life. Then I have something to write about, joke or to animate.

'Control' had to do with my own life a lot, and that's why that seemed to be a film I could be the director of, because I had an emotional attachment to the whole story. And because of that experience, I feel that I can try other films. I didn't set out to become a director.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

You may have heard the world is made up of atoms and molecules, but it's really made up of stories. When you sit with an individual that's been here, you can give quantitative data a qualitative overlay.

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

You've got to live life to write a book about it.

Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books - the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day.

I have known Farley Mowat all of my life, from reading his books as a child to becoming a close friend of his over the last three decades.

I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

If you're going to write about your life, you must write about your life.

Every person you meet has a story.

Anyone can write your own life story.

Books and movies are kind of my two great loves. I don't have too many other actual hobbies. That's pretty much it.

It's not just that everyone has a story. It's that everyone has a thousand stories. Everyone is infinite.

It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

Everything happens for a reason. Like, I kind of hear people go, 'Man, you've been in a lot of bands.' Yes, I have. I've also been married several times, too, and every time I get into something, I think, 'This is the one.' I think that's just human nature.