The Dickens Boy Quotes

“And so she went on, galloping through thickets of diphthongs, searching—I was sure—for the sound that would not disgrace her husband, and failing at every turn.”
― Thomas Keneally, The Dickens Boy: A Novel

“The resurrection of Christ was easier to believe in than the death of Charles Dickens. Aunt Georgie traveled with him, Wilkie Collins, Pa’s brother Alfred, Katie’s husband, Aunt Letitia, Frank Beard, and John Forster had also attended. Who else? George Sala, who worked at the magazine. Fred Ouvry, who had given me a lawyerly talking-to before I left home. Had the girl been there, too, in the coaches? At the Abbey? The newspaper article did not mention her. Mama was not mentioned. Had he gone to the trouble, the guvnor, of saying she shouldn’t be?”
― Thomas Keneally, The Dickens Boy

“Yet this generous host and game player, this cultivator of surprise and wonder in children, was submerged by the grim and punishing father Alfred seemed determined to have me believe in.”
― Thomas Keneally, The Dickens Boy

“As well as exams at Harrow too n-n-numerous to mention, I had the distinction to fail the India C-Civil Service e-exam, the army entrance e-e-exam, the Greenwich n-naval exam, the F-F-Foreign and Colonial and a d-dozen more.”
― Thomas Keneally, The Dickens Boy