...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.

Have some more tea, dear," Hester said, reaching for the pot and refilling my cup. "I always find that helps.

I was learning, even in my brief time in England, that a cup of tea almost always helped. I didn't know whether it was the caffeine, the warmth, or the simple fact of having someone else do something kind, but a soothing cup of tea in Harriet Dalrymple's cottage was fast becoming my lifeline to sanity.

People who say Jane or talk about Janeites revolt me. The sort that can walk with kings and not lose that common touch. 'Miss Austen to you' is what I feel inclined to say.

Like Wollstonecraft, Austen rejects the notion that ‘man was made to reason, woman to feel.’ Perhaps Austen was tired of reading passages in conduct books suggesting that young women were innately sensitive, quivering, emotional messes.

How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.