“I was convinced I felt as strongly about Jane Austen's books as Ashleigh had ever felt about any of her crazes, but my love was deep and silent - and therefore easily overshadowed.”

“I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity—how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.”

“It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn't about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”

“Christopher, baby, I love you. Completely. I love your looks and everything else about you.” She felt his hand enclose around hers. “I know you do. Ashleigh…I love you so much that it scares me. Everything I do, I have you in mind.”

“Now I was more certain than ever of my decision. I could not love a man who did not love Jane Austen.”

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”