Poverty, therefore, was comparative. One measured it by a sliding scale. One was always poor, in terms of those who were richer.

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

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.

If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.

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.