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A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter QUOTES

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter QUOTES

1 " There's no doubt about it: fun people are fun. But I finally learned that there is something more important, in the people you know, than whether they are fun. Thinking about those friends who had given me so much pleasure but who had also caused me so much pain, thinking about that bright, cruel world to which they'd introduced me, I saw that there's a better way to value people. Not as fun or not fun, or stylish or not stylish, but as warm or cold, generous or selfish. People who think about others and people who don't. People who know how to listen, and people who only know how to talk. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

2 " ...Novels--which, after all, are training grounds for responding to the world, imaginative sanctuaries in which to hone and test our ethical judgments and choices. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

3 " Austen, I realized, had not been writing about everyday things because she couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. She had been writing about them because she wanted to show how important they really are. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

4 " Jane Austen’s life may have seemed uneventful compared to her aunt’s or cousin’s or brothers’, or indeed, compared to just about anyone’s. Her genius began with the recognition that such lives as hers were very eventful indeed—that every life is eventful, if only you know how to look at it. She did not think that her existence was quiet or trivial or boring; she thought it was delightful and enthralling, and she wanted us to see that our own are, too. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

5 " Her genius began with the recognition that such lives as hers were very eventful indeed—that every life is eventful, if only you know how to look at it. She did not think that her existence was quiet or trivial or boring; she thought it was delightful and enthralling, and she wanted us to see that our own are, too. She understood that what fills our days should fill our hearts, and what fills our hearts should fill our novels.     If "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

6 " I sentimenti sono anche il modo primo di conoscere un romanzo; e i romanzi sono il terreno di prova per conoscere il mondo, santuari dell'immaginazione dove affinare e mettere alla prova i nostri valori, le nostre scelte. I sentimenti sono lo strumento di lavoro dei romanzieri, i colori della loro tavolozza. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

7 " what does it mean to identify with a literary character? I thought I knew, but did I really? Does it simply mean putting yourself in their place? Obviously not. Or approving of their actions? But we’re happy to identify with bad characters, given the right encouragement. No, the best I could come up with was that it seemed to be a kind of in-between state—you’re somehow them and not them at the same time—that can’t exactly be put into words. "

― William Deresiewicz , A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter