“The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers. ”

“Mary-Lynnette: "You have not read 'Pride and Prejudice'."Ash: "Why not?"Mary-Lynnette: "Because Jane Austen was a human."Ash: "How do you know?"Mary-Lynnette: "Well Jane Austen was a woman, and you're a chauvinist pig."Ash: "Yes, well, that I can't argue.”

“All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.”

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

“Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?”

“Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.”