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I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

Dickens belongs to the English people.

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.

The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.

I was brought up on Dickens. I remember reading 'Bleak House' but, coming back to it, I didn't remember much about it apart from a few characters.

I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

When I was a little girl, I thought I was Sydney Carton in Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' I don't think anyone else did.

I grew up in a middle class English family just outside London. I wasn't surrounded by that speedy city lifestyle, it was a little mellower.