Austen Quotes

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)
I'm a Jewish Jane Austen. View quote
Howard Jacobson
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. View quote
Peter Greenaway
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Karen Joy Fowler
I did a cover for 'Rolling Stone' the other day and it was a kind of crazy lack of outfit. I thought, 'Oh, Lord. I'm never going to be Jane Austen in a film now!' 'Cause that's what I'd really like to do. View quote
Rose McGowan
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. View quote
Roddy Doyle
How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel! View quote
Dodie Smith
It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw 'The Outsiders', I knew better. It was the first time I'd realized that real people write books. View quote
Ally Carter
Look at Jane Austen. Her characters derive in a reasonably straight line from fairy tales. View quote
Andrew Davies
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature. (Anne Stevenson)
Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of. View quote
Julie Walters
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. View quote
Leslie Fiedler
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. View quote
Leslie Fiedler
Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist. View quote
George Saintsbury
Thank you very much. Good Heavens. Um, I can't thank you enough, Hollywood Foreign Press, for honouring me in this capacity. I don't wish to burden you with my debts, which are heavy and numerous but, um, I think that everybody involved in the making of this film knows that we owe all our pride and all our joy to the genius of Jane Austen. And, um, it occurred to me to wonder how she would react to an evening like this... [Puts down statue on stage, reads paper] This is what I came up with. View quote
Emma Thompson
I went to the movies to see Independence Day, the outer-space summer blockbuster of 1996. (Even the most committed intellectual can't survive on an unalloyed diet of Jane Austen remakes.) View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
In other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama. View quote
Harper Lee
My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles. View quote
Tracy Chevalier
The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous. I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales's secretary. You know I didn't think they'd rake through my bins, I didn't expect to be photographed on the beach through long lenses. I never dreamt it would impact my daughter's life negatively, which at times it has. (J. K. Rowling)
It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing. View quote
Terry Pratchett
Raw sex is the last thing you are going to encounter in a Jane Austen woman. View quote
Peter Greenaway
A long white dress that starts under the breast and travels on interminably down -- so their legs are entirely mysterious -- they could have one leg or two inside that dress... A Jane Austen woman could be incredibly passionate inside that dress. View quote
Peter Greenaway
In the film The Belly of an Architect, an architect from Chicago organizes an exhibition of his favourite architect Etienne-Lous Boullée (1728-1799). I wrote an account of this hypothetical exhibition as though it had been seen by an unlikely Boullée contemporary -- Jane Austen (1775-1817). She made a prim but perceptive account of her progress through the corridors and halls of the Vittoriano in the centre of Rome -- a building constructed long after both of these eminent personages were dead. View quote
Peter Greenaway