I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.
I'm a Jane AustenJane Eyre kind of girl.
To Jane Austen, every fool is a treasure trove.
I boast of being the only man in London who has been bombed off a lavatory seat while reading Jane Austen. She went into the bath; I went through the door.
It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.
I love books; my suitcases are always full of them. Books and shoes. I read when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am nervous. My favourite British author is Jane Austen, and my favourite American one is John O'Hara.
If there was a Jane Austen camp, I would go, no question.
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
And I love Jane Austen's use of language too--the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom in my mind. Beethoven does the same thing with his cadence and phrasing and structure. It's a fact: Jane Austen is musical. And so's Yeats. And Wordsworth. All the great writers are musical.
It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.
What’s ready? Was Steinback ready? Hemingway? Shakespeare? Dickens? Jane Austen? They just did it, didn’t they?
As Jane Austen might have put it: It is a truth universally acknowledged that young protagonists in search of adventure must ditch their parents.
Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.
Well, I'm drawn to stuff that is darker. I will probably do a version of Jane Austen at some point because her books are really well known. Unfortunately they've been parodied to death, but they're so well known that I feel like I should approach it and I think I have an idea that will definitely spin it in a different way. There's melancholy and sadness around the edges. I haven't read all of her books, but it seems they often have. . . essentially happy endings?
I think I made a mistake with [Jane] Austen by reading all six in a row. There are similarities to the plots so by the time I got to the last one I could anticipate what was happening too easily. But her characterizations are amazing.
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.
There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.
I can talk about Jane Austen until the cows come home.
All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
