Austen Quotes - Page 3

• 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

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• I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

  J. K. Rowling

  Would Be, Fame, Famous Writers

  "'Harry is a lot, lot, lot angrier in this book'". Interview with Jeremy Paxman, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 20, 2003.

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

  J. K. Rowling

  Literature, Pinnacle, Aspire

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Literature, Hawthorne

  "Conversation: Julian Barnes, Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize". "Art Beat" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 8, 2011.

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• That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else's expense. Write a paper and see the world! I'm Jane Austen - fly me!

  David Lodge

  Writing, Play, World

  David Lodge (2011). “The Campus Trilogy: Changing Places; Small World; Nice Work”, p.420, Penguin

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• Look at Jane Austen. Her characters derive in a reasonably straight line from fairy tales.

  Andrew Davies

  Character, Looks, Lines

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• The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Sports, Education

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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• Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Animal, Men, Doe

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• I'm a Jewish Jane Austen.

  Howard Jacobson

  Jane

  Nextbook Interview, September 14, 2004.

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• 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.

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• Now I was more certain than ever of my decision. I could not love a man who did not love Jane Austen.

  Deanna Raybourn

  Men, Decision, Certain

  Deanna Raybourn (2016). “Deanna Raybourn Lady Julia Grey Volume 1: Silent in the Grave\Silent in the Sanctuary\Silent on the Moor”, p.630, MIRA

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• ...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964

  Harper Lee

  Alabama, Want, Interviews

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• I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Character, Loss

  "Emerson: Selected Journals 1841 - 1877" by Lawrence Rosenwald (p. 768), 2010.

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• All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.

  Mary Ann Shaffer

  Love, Lying, Hero

  Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer (2011). “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.274, Dial Press

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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