Austen Quotes - Page 2

• Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

  George Saintsbury

  Missing, Novelists, Ordinary

  George Saintsbury (2012). “The English Novel”, p.234, tredition

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

  Roddy Doyle

  Mother, Princess, Small Rooms

  "Writing Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" by Roddy Doyle, www.theguardian.com. August 28, 2009.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.

  Jane Gardam

  Book, Men, Two

  4 Copy quote

• I would be curious about one of those Jane Austen women - you know - long-suffering, dutiful - but all right in the end - a plump 19th century type, five foot four, ringlets, brown eyes, long fingers.

  Peter Greenaway

  Eye, Feet, Long

  "Fictional character: Philip Emmenthal". 8 1/2 Women, 1999.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.

  E. M. Delafield

  Book, Reading, Sleep

  E. M. Delafield (2016). “Diary of a Provincial Lady”, p.48, Pan Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

  Mary McCarthy

  Jane

  4 Copy quote

• So perhaps the correct conclusion is that Green was less attuned to how people sound when they speak - the actual words and expressions they employ - than to what they mean. This notion of dialogue as a pure expression of character that...transcends the specifics of time and place may be partly why the conversations in the works of writers such as Austen and Bronte often sound fresh and astonishingly contemporary.

  Francine Prose

  Character, Mean, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• Each of us has a private Austen.

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Karen Joy Fowler (2005). “The Jane Austen Book Club”, p.1, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

  Harold Bloom

  Art, Reading, Passion

  12 Copy quote

• Ever since I was young, I've read Austen and the Brontes. My friends laugh, but those books are always so tragic and wonderful - those stories, they're just incredible.

  Jessica Brown Findlay

  Book, Laughing, Stories

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, People

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've done my share of period stuff. I'm not sure why, but people say I have a period face. The bread and butter of British TV is Jane Austen adaptations and bridges and bonnets and boats and horses.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Horse, Bridges, People

  4 Copy quote

• My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Virginia, Role Models, Roles

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.

  Julie Walters

  Novelists, Able, Extraordinary

  7 Copy quote

• I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

  A. N. Wilson

  Dining, Tables, Jane

  "AN Wilson: 'Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow'". Interview with William Skidelsky, www.theguardian.com. April 21, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Impact, Needs, Bookstores

  Karen Joy Fowler (2005). “The Jane Austen Book Club”, p.4, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Growing up, I mostly read comic books and sci-fi. Then I discovered the book 'Jane Eyre' by Jane Austen. It introduced me to the world of romance, which I have since never left. Also, the world of the first-person narrative.

  Meg Cabot

  Growing Up, Book, Romance

  7 Copy quote

• For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Pride, Journey, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Aunt, Greatness

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928”, Chatto & Windus

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

  E. M. Forster

  Air, Expression, Names

  7 Copy quote

• Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

  Tracy Chevalier

  Reading, Eye, Appreciate

  4 Copy quote

• But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

  Dodie Smith

  Real, Book, Character

  Dodie Smith (2017). “I Capture the Castle: Young Adult Edition”, p.65, St. Martin's Griffin

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• As Jane Austen might have put it: It is a truth universally acknowledged that young protagonists in search of adventure must ditch their parents.

  Philip Pullman

  Writing, Adventure, Parent

  6 Copy quote

• Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

  J. K. Rowling

  Literature, Pinnacle, Aspire

  26 Copy quote

• Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Past, Magic, Lines

  4 Copy quote