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

I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything.

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

One of the reasons we all still read Jane Austen is because her books are about universal things which still matter today - love, money, family. They haven't gone out of fashion, so it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater to rework her in a contemporary style.

I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things.

I've been fortunate in that I never actually read any Jane Austen until I was thirty, thus sparing myself several decades of the unhappiness of having no new Jane Austen novels to read.

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

'Pride and Prejudice' - perhaps more than any other Jane Austen book - is engrained in our literary consciousness.