Jane Quotes

Will you tell me how long you have loved him?"
"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. ~ Jane Austen

Just as there can be a hole in these narratives, a memoir can be as much about what's forgotten as what's remembered. ~ Jane Alison

Clarissa thought that was the problem with toothpaste, it always wound up looking like it had a drunken binge the night before and was spitting up all over itself. ~ Vera Jane Cook

I don't approve of surprises. The pleasure is never enhanced and the inconvenience is considerable. ~ Jane Austen

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable and at the same time dreaded to be just from the pain of obligation were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to town he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise and where he was reduced to meet frequently meet reason with persuade and finally bribe the man whom he always most wished to avoid and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient when required to depend on his affection for her - for a woman who had already refused him - as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for ~ Jane Austen

been used to look in Hertfordshire - paid his ~ Jane Austen

I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both. ~ Jane Yolen

Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building. ~ Jane Jacobs

A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy Emma ~ Jane Austen

We neither of us perform to strangers. ~ Jane Austen

Her little hands, Crumb. Her little paws, like a child's. She has no guile in her. And she never speaks. And if she does I hate to bend my head to hear what she says. And in the pause I can hear my heart. Her little bits of embroidery, her scraps of silk, her halcyon sleeves, she cut out of the cloth some admirer gave her once, some poor boy struck with love for her...and yet she has never succumbed. Her little sleeves, her seed pearl necklace...she has nothing...she expects nothing...' A tear at last sneaks from Henry's eye, meanders down his cheek and vanishes into the mottled grey and ginger of his beard. ~ Hilary Mantel

Who can endure a Cabbage Bed in October? - 'Sanditon ~ Jane Austen

One's only real regret in life is the failure to act. ~ Jane Stanton Hitchcock

I admire my mother. She raised four kids and worked and had no help. ~ Jane Leeves

You see, I have a different nature than he has. What makes me happy I seem to catch out of the sky with both hands; I only hold whatever it is that I love because that is all I can really see. ~ Jane Bowles

To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day. ~ Charlotte Bronte

There are some nights when you've spent so long analysing things that all that's left to do is get drunk. ~ Jane Costello

She continued walking, never revealing her disappointment until she'd passed beyond
her own smile, which faded and appeared, faded and appeared, as if prompted and cajoled out of hiding. ~ Vera Jane Cook

In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there ~ Jane Austen

Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. ~ Jane Lynch

Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display. ~ Jane Austen

Ree is his. Is his, is devoted to him, is aggravatingly tender and possessively passionate and wrapped up in him in a thousand ways, loves him in a way that is very useful. It seems a law of nature, at this point. Even if the events of this startling evening have served to give him pause, a little. But Ree is still his. He's fairly sure. Such complex knots can't be untied so quickly, can they?

Still, it's not the only thing disturbing him, about the Dam's account of early events. She laughs when she sees his face, his sidewise look at her description, and there's definitely a mean note to it. "Oh, it was darling," she says, and he gets the feeling of a caged animal stuck behind bars, while a cruel child pokes at it. "You were enchanted by his wolf, would follow it anywhere, welcome or not, though mostly he tolerated it. But you couldn't manage his name – and a nickname hadn't stuck at that point – so instead you imitated the sound he made. Rather insultingly, too, if not intentionally – Ruff. Or Woof, or whatever it was that you intended to say, except that it actually came out as Wuff. Or Wuffy, depending, and at varying pitches and volume as you ran after him, falling down and rolling about half the time."

Penn is transfixed. It's outrageous, it's an outrage. It can't possibly be true. It was nothing like that. ~ Alex Ankarr

The flowers of the forest are a' wide awae. ~ Jane Elliott

Arguably, we are the most intellectual creatures that's ever walked on planet Earth. So how come, then, that this so intellectual creature is destroying its only home? ~ Jane Goodall

Every time something goes wrong, you give up on us. You're killing me, Caro … I don't know what will happen…but neither do you. Maybe we'll make it…maybe we won't. But you're giving up before we've even tried. I don't understand. Why won't you take a chance? ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help. ~ Jane McGonigal

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know? ~ Thomas Jane

And books! ... she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. ~ Jane Austen

I'm going to miss you, girls," he told the plants.
"You have names for them?" croaked Jane.
"This is Beatrice."
"You're not really a people person, are you?"
"Humans piss me off. ~ Adam Baker

Stroking Jane's soft hair, he murmured, "About ... the things I have here. If you're game, I'm still going to want to play ... if you know what I mean. But from now on, it's just for fun, and only for you and me."
Hell, they'd had a shitload of good, leathered-up, freaky sex in this place, and he was always going
to want that with her. Hopefully, she'd feel the same
"I like what we do here." She smiled. "It turns me on."
Well ... didn't that get his cock pumping. "Me, too. ~ J.R. Ward

Emma; but you must think him agreeable. Can you lay your hand on your heart, and say you do not?
- Indeed I can, Both Hands; and spread to their widest extent. ~ Jane Austen

You can't be angry to someone who is just sad. We all are humans. We can't control our tears which is streaming down our faces.. ~ Jane Kusina

When I auditioned for 'Wedding Crashers,' the producers had never seen any of my other work except for Bond. I got 'Wedding Crashers' partly because I was a Bond girl. ~ Jane Seymour

Our time was most delightfully spent, in mutual Protestations of Freindship, and in vows of unalterable Love, in which we were secure from being interrupted, by intruding and disagreeable Visistors, as Augustus and Sophia had on their first Entrance in the Neighbourhood, taken due care to inform the surrounding Families, that as their happiness centered wholly in themselves, they wished for no other society. ~ Jane Austen

The complexion of a novelist is seldom rosy (Paul Bailey once announced to a heavy-hearted audience of novelists at PEN that we have always been an ugly tribe). We are engaged in indoor activity, haemorrhoidal, prone to chillblains, poor of circulation. ~ Jane Gardam

When once married people begin to attack me with, 'Oh! you will think very differently, when you are married,' I can only say, 'No I shall not'; and then they say again, 'Yes you will,' and there is an end to it. ~ Jane Austen

Mary Jane was a very important person in The Underworld. Nasir liked to call her the chef of the Underworld. Although ~ Nako

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials. ~ Jane Smiley

The whole weekend turned out to be one giant round of excruciating foreplay, and if he doesn't stop stalling and give me some relief pretty damn pronto, there's going to be a girl-parts rebellion the likes of which he's never seen. I'm wound tighter than Jane Fonda's latest facelift, goddammit. ~ Leisa Rayven

The more I see the world, most dislike, and the time confirms my belief in the inconsistency of human nature and how little can one trust the appearances of goodness or intelligence ~ Jane Austen

I stopped watching television like a fiend once I got into college. ~ Jane Lynch

I think relationships are very difficult. It's very easy to get swept away with excitement, glamour, and passion. I think the trick is to look for friendship rather than passion. ~ Jane Green

He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her that all was safe, her wit flowed long. ~ Jane Austen

I knew that we were two humans, that's all, two humans walking around blindly in the night, looking for a warm hand. ~ Jane Hamilton

Some vampires wouldn't react if you shoved a rosary down their pants, though I wouldn't recommend testing the theory. ~ Molly Harper

Marginalised and abused children are often overlooked even today, and risk becoming marginalised and abused adults who may never receive acknowledgment or respect for the immense physical and emotional burden they carry from childhood or indeed have their full potential realised. ~ Jane Hersey

When I first came into this world, Elvis was already fat. ~ Jane Wagner

Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope. ~ Jane Austen

By going along with feelings, you unify your emotional, mental and bodily states. When you try to fight or deny them, you divorce yourself from the reality of your being. ~ Jane Roberts

Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her. ~ Jane Austen

The nation can no longer afford to continue policies that hasten the flight of persons to the distant suburbs. ~ Jane Byrne

A common complaint about stories that include excessive coincidence is that the story is 'unrealistic.' ~ Jane Lindskold

I spend as much time as I possibly can doing things for other people, if I can. If I see a need and I feel that I can help, I do it. I work a great deal in terms of charities and things. ~ Jane Seymour

You know what they call a guy who switches sides in homicide? They call him a Jane Fonda, as in hanging with the North Vietnamese. You get it? It's crossing to the dark side. ~ Michael Connelly

I was an unusually private person - in a way, kind of insufferably so. I think I thought the celebrity thing when it happened was a temporary phenomenon, and I was above it. ~ Jane Pauley

With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world! ~ Jane Addams

I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing. ~ Jane Austen

I think if you go from show to show without doing that big PR blitz it's helpful because people can get pretty sick of your face if you're just out there all the time. And keep a low profile, hold in your stomach and be a good sport. ~ Jane Curtin

Austen suggests that a gentleman is made, not born - and made only through a process of painful self-reflection and discovery. ~ Emily Auerbach

I have a thing for working with wounded characters. ~ Jane Jensen

Jane and Mr. Nobley entered the great hall, the ceiling dazzling with thousands of real candles that put fire into the white dresses and cravats. Five musicians were seated on a dais--a cello and two violins (or maybe a viola?), a harpsichord, and some kind of wind instrument. From keys and strings, they coaxed a grand prelude to the minuet. Jane looked at everything, smiling at the amusement park novelty of it all. She looked at Mr. Nobley. He was beaming at her. At last.
"You are stunning," he said, and every inch of him seemed to swear that it was true.
"Oh," she said.
He kissed her gloved fingers. He was still smiling. There was something different about him tonight, and she couldn't place what it was. Some new plot twist, she presumed. She was eager to roll around in all the plot she could on her last night, though once or twice her eyes strayed to spot Martin.
Mr. Nobley stood opposite her in a line of ten men. She watched Amelia and Captain East perform the figures. They held each other's gazes, they smiled with the elation of new love. All very convincing.
Poor Amelia, thought Jane.
It was a bit cruel, now that she thought about it, all these actors who made women fall in love with them. Amelia seemed so tenderhearted, and Miss Charming and her heaving breasts so delighted with this world. Jane caught sight of a very striking Colonel Andrews who, now that she watched him dance, might just be gay.
Jane felt a thrumming of foreboding. ~ Shannon Hale

I am blessed beyond reason with women friends. ~ Jane Fonda

It once amused me that it took me three tries to pass my driver's test and that my driving instructor told my mother that I was the least talented person behind the wheel that she had ever taught. ~ Jane Smiley

I always find that after reading books written by Jane Austen that I speak much more properly, at least for a while. ~ Becky Watson

These women, genteel and beautiful, are the rebels who say no to the choices made by silly mothers, incompetent fathers (there are seldom any wise fathers in Austen's novels) and the rigidly orthodox society. They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose. ~ Azar Nafisi

Address things now that could otherwise turn into regrets. ~ Jane Fonda

N.V.N.
(translated by Jane Kenyon)
There is a sacred, secret line in loving
which attraction and even passion cannot cross,
even if lips draw near in awful silence
and love tears at the heart.
Friendship is weak and useless here,
and years of happiness, exalted and full of fire,
because the soul is free and does not know
the slow luxuries of sensual life.
Those who try to come near it are insane
and those who reach it are shaken by grief,
So now you know exactly why
my heart beats no faster under your hand. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Of all the events leading up to the departure for the shore, though, was one that had been months in the making. The two souls in question had been united at first through their mutual love for a lost woman. They soon discovered that she was but the medium through which the universe once again exercised its peculiar ability to match those destined to be so linked." The Exile (2017) ~ Don Jacobson

She attracted him more than he liked. ~ Jane Austen

Sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; ~ Jane Austen

Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can't push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing. ~ Jane Seymour

For Marianne, however - in spite of his incivility in surviving her loss - he always retained that decided regard which interested him in every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman; - and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon. ~ Jane Austen

I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide. ~ Eva Green

Wandering down the street in an aimless sort of way, cold too, in a dress from last night that made young men stop and stare in the street, Charity Hill found herself hating the single life for the very first time. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan. ~ Jane Goodall

I saw the lovely arch Of rainbow span the sky, The gold sun burning As the rain swept by. ~ Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth. ~ Jane Austen

If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor. ~ Jane Porter

I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister,' said he, as he joined her.
'You certainly do,' she replied with a smile; 'but it does not follow that the interruption must be unwelcome. ~ Jane Austen

There are such beings in the world
perhaps one in a thousand
as the creature you and I should think perfection; where grace and spirit are united to worth, where the manners are equal to the heart and understanding; but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the near relation of your particular friend, and belonging to your own county. ~ Jane Austen

Stopping just short of her mouth, he rasped, "Are you still engaged to Blakeborough?"
Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. "My engagement didn't stop you last night."
"It would now."
A coy smile broke over her lips, and she tightened her grip on his neck. "Then I suppose it's a good thing I am not."
With a growl of triumph, he kissed her once more. She was here. She was his. Nothing else mattered.
Still kissing her, he jerked both sets of curtains closed. Then he tugged her onto his lap and began to tear at the fastenings of her pelisse-dress. He wanted to touch her, taste her…be inside her. He could think of naught else.
"I take it that you mean to seduce me," she murmured between kisses.
"Yes." Seduce her and marry her. And then seduce her again, as often as he could.
"Well then, carry on."
So he did. He unfastened her clothes just enough to bare her breasts, then seized one in his mouth. God, she was perfect. His perfect jewel.
She buried her hands in his hair to pull her into him, sighing and moaning as if she would die if he didn't make love to her. Which was exactly how he felt.
Working his hand up beneath her skirts and into the slit in her drawers, he found her so wet and hot that he nearly came right there. He slipped a finger inside her silky sweetness, and she gasped, then began to tug at his trouser buttons.
"You're all I want, Jane." As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfaste ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Because I've a track record of talking about books I never write, in Australia they think I'm about to write a book about Jane Austen. Something I said at some festival. ~ Kate Atkinson

Angus skidded to a stop and lifted his jaw as if sensing he was being watched. He looked in her direction and instantly covered his manhood as his eyes caught Jane's shocked face in the tree limbs. "Oh, lassie."
"Oh, naked man," Jane teased before she could stop herself. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else. ~ Jane Austen

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job. ~ Jane Goodall

Of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected ~ Jane Austen

His expression softened, which made Sterling's throat tighten just a little. "You've cannonballed into the deep end when you don't know how to swim, haven't you?"
Sterling looked at him solemnly and smiled. "Yes," he said. "Don't let me drown. ~ Jane Davitt

Thank you. There were three of us kids, all right together. I'm the oldest, she was the knee-baby, and my brother Henry came last. Funny, I miss her all the time, but I miss her most when I'm reading Austen. We'd been fans since we were in the seventh and eighth grade, two Creole girls gigglin' about marriage proposals gone bad. Our daddy teased us about reading each other passages during a Fourth of July crawfish boil, so he named the biggest one Mr. Darcy and threw him in the pot." She looked up, a smile fighting the tears in her eyes. "We refused to eat him. ~ Mary Jane Hathaway

Isn't the small and common the field we live our life in? The large comes into a life through small-paned windows. A breath is small, but everything depends on it. A person looks at you a single, brief moment longer than is necessary, and everything is changed. The smaller the clue, the larger the meaning, it sometimes feels. ~ Jane Hirshfield

I hear you're losing weight again, Mary Jane. Do you ever wonder who you're losing it for? ~ Alanis Morissette

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Under Polly's eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * * Cat watches as her cab winds its way through the streets of Soho, thinking she would never stoop to that. It's the lowest of the low. We're supposed to be features writers, not news hacks. But behind her mutterings, behind her disdain, as unwilling as she is to admit it, lies a ribbon of insecurity. The Daily Gazette is the best paper she could ever imagine working for, but Cat, just past her mid-twenties, has yet to prove herself with a big story. She's proving adept at the smaller fluff pieces - How to wear a scarf in thirty different ways! How to put the romance back into your marriage! (As if she would know anything about that.) How to revamp your wardrobe in five easy steps! But the big interviews, the ones that Poppy ~ Jane Green

My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me. ~ Jane Austen

I've always been profoundly ambivalent about fame. I think it just eats the reality out of you and it can be intoxicating because I like some of it. ~ Jane Pauley

We don't need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables - the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers - to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences. ~ Jane Elliot

nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination. PERSUASION ~ Jane Austen

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine ... But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine ... ~ Jane Austen

As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make amends for deficiencies at home, there were none within the circle of her father's and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed "airs"; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of superiority. ~ Jane Austen

They are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters. ~ Jane Austen