“...I thought he was the man I'd been waiting for. A hero right out of Austen. The one who would finally make everything okay. Only he wasn't real. Like Austen's characters, he was fiction. Mr. Darcy broke my heart.”

“My very own goth Mr. Darcy. Jane Austen would be so proud.”

“But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.”

“Mr. Towers, you are going to have to beg for that.” He lets out a loud chuckle, “Beg?” “Oh, Ms Austen, just wait for what you are in store for this evening. Begging doesn’t even begin to describe what I am going to make you do,” he smiles seductively.”

“I could blame my lack of a happy ending on Edward all day long but the truth was that my own dissatisfaction with my life wasn't anybody's fault but mine. I'd been looking for a man to sweep me off my feet when I should have been looking for one who willing to pick up the pieces. Not some fictional hero, but a real flesh-and-blood man. Someone who would love me for the long haul.”

“He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.”