Austen Quotes

Austen Quote of the day

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.

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

Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.

I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.

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

Angry people are not always wise.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.

I'm a Jewish Jane Austen.

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

There is a monsterous deal of stupid quizzing, & common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.

To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a married man in possession of a vast fortune must be in want of a newer, younger wife.

I'm not a big Austen reader. I wouldn't say I dislike her, but if I had to choose between her and Eliot to bring to a desert island, it would definitely be Eliot.

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

Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.

There's a history of English literature where the best boils to the top, and Jane Austen stands right at the top of that.

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

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

To Jane Austen, every fool is a treasure trove.

Jane Austen is the feminine Peter Pan of letters. She never grew up.

There are some writers who wrote too much. There are others who wrote enough. There are yet others who wrote nothing like enough to satisfy their admirers, and Jane Austen is certainly one of these.

Updike's style is an exquisite blend of Melville and Austen: reading him is like cutting through whale blubber with embroidery scissors.

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

Each of us has a private Austen.

[I]t is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.

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.

It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.

Cooper wrote a novel which is absolutely indistinguishable from Austen, completely from a female point of view, completely English, no sense that he was an American.

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.

I actually didn't like Jane Austen. I was more into the Brontes. They were so wild and passionate. I thought there was something a bit tame about Austen.

Because I had grown up with Jane Austen novels and period dramas, I was very familiar with that period and that world.

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

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

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.

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

One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen.

I can talk about Jane Austen until the cows come home.

[ Lady Susan novel by Jane Austen is] extremely difficult to adapt. I worked on it for years, for, like, ten years, before I started showing it to people. This was my back-burner project.

Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?

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

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.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

If there was a Jane Austen camp, I would go, no question.

Pride and Prejudice' - perhaps more than any other Jane Austen book - is engrained in our literary consciousness.

Jane Austen can in fact get more drama out of morality than most other writers can get from shipwreck, battle, murder, or mayhem.

I believed in happily ever after as much as anyone, because Jane Austen, Prince Charming, and Hugh Grant promised me it could happen. But maybe that particular delusion was universal.

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.