Austen Quote by George Saintsbury

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.

— Mark Haddon

“Austen's works have endured because she had a superb narrative technique and a gift for creating characters who feel as real as life itself.…

— Syrie James

Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard…

— Julie Walters

“I cannot imagine a world in which one can read Jane Austen only once.”

— Laurie Viera Rigler

“How to explain the sheer tingling joy one experiences when two interesting, complex, and occasionally aggravating characters have at last settled their misunderstandings and…

— Margaret C. Sullivan

“[Jane] Austen was not a novelist for nothing: she knew that our stories are what make us human, and that listening to someone else's…

— William Deresiewicz

“Miss Austen’s novels … seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius,…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Did Jane Austen ruin lives by giving people false expectations about love? Were her heroes just too good to be true? Could a real…

— Victoria Connelly

People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly…

— Nick Hornby

“The visible structure of Jane Austen's stories may be flimsy enough; but their foundations drive deep down into the basic principles of human conduct.…

— David Cecil

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

— J. K. Rowling

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

— Madeleine L'Engle