Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have turned it upside down and told the stories from the other point of view.

Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.

You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person.

Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations.

How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.

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.