I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.
No good writer ever merely cheered us up. But there's an unblinking stare into the darkness of things we have to go elsewhere to find. Jane Austen was made of strong stuff. She was too satiric for D. H. Lawrence's taste and too unforgiving for Kingsley Amis's, but you would still not call her hellish.
In the summer of 1991, I was on the first Lollapalooza tour. Nightly, I would watch Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell go out in front of a sea of people and within minutes have all of them in the palm of his hand. I have never seen anything like it since.
I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.
It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.
Jane's Addiction has only put out new music when our hearts were in and when we had something to say creatively.
I was invited to do an all-female improv festival in Portland called All Jane, No Dick. The person running it asked me if I had a female improv team, and I just said yes and then figured out who I would want to bring with me. We had such a fun show together that we decided that we should keep doing it.
Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.
How can a guy climb trees, say Me Tarzan, You Jane, and make a million?
I'm a Jane Austen/Jane Eyre kind of girl.
Their spirits and their visions are embodied in their craft. And so is mine. It's not Jane Saw Puff. But the clarity of Jane Saw Puff is precious to me.
As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap.
I was a huge 'Deadwood' fan because I'm a huge David Milch fan, so I've always wanted to play something like Calamity Jane on 'Deadwood' and just be the biggest Western tomboy girl, ever.
I was really glad to meet Jane Clark because it did give me an insight. I couldn't imagine what kind of woman she was. I was hugely impressed by her energy, straightforward nature and enthusiasm for life.
I feel that Jane's is really a vibe and a time. It wasn't like we were the Beatles. We didn't have crafty pop songs where it sort of didn't matter who played them because they're just really great songs.
Anne Elliot was the one Jane Austen character I didn't fall in love with. She seemed sad and defeated.
I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
I do hope to bring Jane Whitefield back before too long.
I wasn't allowed to watch regular television when I was growing up, only PBS, so I watched 'Masterpiece Theatre' and a lot of Jane Austen. I loved stories where the girl is attracted to a man and it looks like it's not going to work out.
It was a good experience working with Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda.
If I could choose, I'd be bare feet with animals all around me and living in a tree house. Like Tarzan and Jane, that's my dream. I'm at my happiest around nature.
Acting-wise, I haven't done a lot of comedy, so I would love to work with Jane Lynch. I think she's hilarious.
As far as 'Jane Pittman,' I don't know that I could verbalize, to this day, what I felt once I got into that role. I did a tremendous amount of research. I need to feel as though I am in the person's skin.
Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.
I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.
The web is just another stunning point in the two-hundred-thousand-year history of human beings on earth. The taming of fire; the discovery of penicillin; the publication of 'Jane Eyre' - add anything you like.
What I'd love to do would be to bring a person from the past to me. In that case I'd pick Jane Austen, because I'd like to know what really made her tick. It's my opinion that she was inhibited by her family and a desire to do the right thing. Away from all that, I believe she'd show new facets and enjoy the adventure.
I did a cover for 'Rolling Stone' the other day and it was a kind of crazy lack of outfit. I thought, 'Oh, Lord. I'm never going to be Jane Austen in a film now!' 'Cause that's what I'd really like to do.
I love to direct my daughter, and act with her, and we both want to work with Jane again.
People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly what Elizabeth Bennett has to overcome, what she has to deal with.
I was influenced by big, strong voices - writers like Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles; gay writers like Ed White, Michael Cunningham, Allen Hollinghurst; and contemporary lesbian writers, like Dorothy Allison.
I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.
You only need to look at Jane Austen to see how crossed wires can become a defining aspect of romantic life. Then again, if the course of true love ran more smoothly, it would have a terribly detrimental effect on our cache of love stories.
The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
