Character Quote by Jane Austen

“Painting for him, she had realized then, was neither a hobby nor just a way of earning a living. It was a passion and…

— Mary Balogh

“It was characteristic of her that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the passionate desire to obliterate, to "get…

— Edith Wharton

“Everything in life, except her kids, made her impatient. She had tried to do a million things. She'd wanted to be a documentary filmmaker…

— Miriam Toews

“She painted because she loved to paint. She never exhibited. She had no career, no ambitions for her work except that it be good,…

— Michael Ignatieff

“He had no illusion that this was bittersweet or somehow necessary to make art. It just burned. Anyone who felt this would take their…

— Arthur Phillips

“Here she was, barely twenty-eight, working on a studio lot, not doing what she’d dreamed, exactly, but doing what people did in this business:…

— Jess Walter

“She drew the things that stuck to her mind, the things that caught her attention and, specially, the things she wasn't capable of understanding…

— Zøe Haslie

“Any artist who has ever created something worthwhile has done so by staying true to himself. You can't do it any other way.”

— Jerrod Edson

“She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires…

— Gustave Flaubert

“She was the sort of person who needed to be kept happy, he realized. Not as a matter of selfish expectation, but as a…

— Kate Morton

“She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her…

— Dean Koontz

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage…

— Alan Bennett