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.

In everyone's life there are people who stay and people who go and people who are taken against their will.

It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.

Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.

I thought there were moments to complain about your parents and moments to be grateful, and it was a shame to mix those moments up.

A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.

We all have a sense of level. It may not be based on class exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we're entitled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. The pretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly. To the detriment of the breed.