Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.
I've always loved Jane Austen's writing.
Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
I read "Pride and Prejudice" [by Jane Austen]. I was gobsmacked by it - it's so funny and so modern. Unbelievable. You don't expect funny to come through after 200 years - humor doesn't transcend decades, let alone centuries.
I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it.
It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.
In some ways, 'Mansfield Park' is 'Pride and Prejudice' turned inside out.
I grew up reading 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Pride and Prejudice' - girly kind of books.
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.
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.
She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.
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.
The 'Pride and Prejudice' with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle was something I watched on a weekly basis with my mum at home in Oxfordshire.
I loved reading 'Anne of Green Gables' and 'Little Women' and Jane Austen. Those were times when people really did have only one true love in their life.
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.
What I'd love to do would be to bring a person from the past to me. In that case I'd pick Jane Austen, because I'd like to know what really made her tick. It's my opinion that she was inhibited by her family and a desire to do the right thing. Away from all that, I believe she'd show new facets and enjoy the adventure.
I remember, when I was a teenager, 'Pride And Prejudice' came out. We hadn't had a period drama for ages, and were all glued to it, and for the next three years, Jane Austen series were being made.
I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.
Before 'Austenland,' I got do a lead role in 'Northanger Abbey', which is Jane Austen. Growing up in England, you can't really ignore Jane Austen. It's always been there.
I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.
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.
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
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.
There's a history of English literature where the best boils to the top, and Jane Austen stands right at the top of that.
'Pride And Prejudice' takes place in a similar period to 'Vanity Fair,' and yet there's a huge difference between Jane Austen and Thackeray.
