- Mrs. Austen: JANE!
- Lady Gresham: What is she doing?
- Mr. Wisley: Writing.
- Lady Gresham: Can anything be done about it?
- Tom Lefroy: I have no money, no property, I am entirely dependent upon that bizarre old lunatic, my uncle. I cannot yet offer marriage, but you must know what I feel. Jane, I'm yours. God, I'm yours. I'm yours, heart and soul. Much good that is.
- Jane Austen: Let me decide that.
- Tom Lefroy: What will we do?
- Jane Austen: What we must.
- Tom Lefroy: You dance with passion.
- Jane Austen: No sensible woman would demonstrate passion, if the purpose were to attract a husband.
- Tom Lefroy: As opposed to a lover?
- Tom Lefroy: How can you, of all people, dispose of yourself without affection?
- Jane Austen: How can I dispose of myself with it?
- Tom Lefroy: [reading from Mr. White's Natural History] Swifts, on a fine morning in May, flying this way, that way, sailing around at a great hight, perfectly happily. Then -
- [checks he has her attention and nods to let her know this is what he meant]
- Tom Lefroy: Then, one leaps onto the back of another, grasps tightly and forgetting to fly they both sink down and down, in a great dying fall, fathom after fathom, until the female utters...
- Jane Austen: [breaking out of trance] Yes?
- Tom Lefroy: [looks at her for a moment, then continues reading] The female utters a loud, piercing cry...
- [he looks up at her again]
- Tom Lefroy: ... of ecstasy.
- [smiles tantalisingly]
- Tom Lefroy: Is this conduct commonplace in the natural history of Hampshire?
- Mrs. Austen: That girl needs a husband. But who's good enough? Nobody. Thanks to you.
- Rev Austen: Being so much the model of perfection.
- Mrs. Austen: I've shared your bed for 32 years and perfection I have not encountered.
- Rev Austen: Yet.
- Cassandra Austen: [regarding 'First Impressions', which will later become 'Pride and Prejudice'] How does the story begin?
- Jane Austen: Badly.
- Cassandra Austen: And then?
- Jane Austen: It gets worse.
- Tom Lefroy: I am yours. Heart and soul, I am yours. Much good that is.
- Jane Austen: I will decide that.
- Henry Austen: Careful, Jane, Lucy is right. Mr. Lefroy does have a reputation.
- Jane Austen: Presumably as the most disagreeable
- [writing]
- Jane Austen: "... insolent, arrogant, impudent, insufferable, impertinent of men. "
- Jane Austen: [pauses] Too many adjectives.
- Mr. Wisley: The good do not always come to good ends. It is a truth universally acknowledged.
- Jane Austen: [writing] "... that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. "
- Tom Lefroy: If you wish to practice the art of fiction, to be the equal of a masculine author, experience is vital.
- Jane Austen: I see. And what qualifies you to offer this advice?
- Tom Lefroy: I know more of the world.
- Jane Austen: A great deal more, I gather.
- Tom Lefroy: Enough to know that your horizons must be... widened.
- Jane Austen: Could I really have this?
- Tom Lefroy: What, precisely?
- Jane Austen: You.
- Tom Lefroy: Me, how?
- Jane Austen: This life with you.
- Tom Lefroy: Yes.
- Wine Whore: [comes to sit on Tom's lap] Glass of wine?
- Tom Lefroy: Yes, thank you.
- [lifts the glass]
- Tom Lefroy: A toast from one member of the profession to another.
- Jane Austen: This, by the way, is called a country dance, after the French, contredanse. Not because it is exhibited at an uncouth rural assembly with glutinous pies, execrable Madeira, and truly anarchic dancing.
- Tom Lefroy: You judge the company severely, madam.
- Jane Austen: I was describing what you'd be thinking.
- Tom Lefroy: Allow me to think for myself.
- Jane Austen: Gives me leave to do the same, sir, and come to a different conclusion.
- Tom Lefroy: Vice leads to difficulty, virtue to reward. Bad characters come to bad ends.
- Jane Austen: Exactly. But in life, bad characters often thrive. Take yourself.
- Tom Lefroy: I think that you, Miss Austen, consider yourself a cut above the company.
- Jane Austen: Me?
- Tom Lefroy: You, ma'am. Secretly.
- Tom Lefroy: I have been told there is much to see upon a walk, but all I've detected so far is a general tendency to green above and brown below.
- Jane Austen: Yes, well, others have detected more. It is celebrated. There's even a book about Selborne Wood.
- Tom Lefroy: Oh. A novel, perhaps?
- Jane Austen: Novels? Being poor, insipid things, read by mere women, even, God forbid, written by mere women?.
- Tom Lefroy: I see, we're talking of your reading.
- Jane Austen: As if the writing of women did not display the greatest powers of mind, knowledge of human nature, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour and the best-chosen language imaginable?
- Cassandra Austen: You'll lose everything. Family, place. For what? A lifetime of drudgery on a pittance? A child every year and no means to lighten the load? How will you write, Jane?
- Jane Austen: I do not know, but happiness is within my grasp and I cannot help myself.
- Cassandra Austen: There is no sense in this.
- Jane Austen: If you could have your Robert back, even like this, would you do it?
- Jane Austen: [after Tom loses a boxing match] Forgive me if I suspect in you a sense of justice.
- Tom Lefroy: I am a lawyer. Justice plays no part in the law.
- Jane Austen: Is that what you believe?
- Tom Lefroy: I believe it. I must.
- Jane Austen: I have read your book. I have read your book and disapprove.
- Tom Lefroy: Of course you do.
- Tom Lefroy: What rules of conduct apply in this rural situation? We have been introduced, have we not?
- Jane Austen: What value is there in an introduction when you cannot even remember my name? Indeed, can barely stay awake in my presence.
- Jane Austen: If I marry, I want it to be out of affection. Like my mother.
- Mrs. Austen: And I have to dig my own damn potatoes!
- Jane Austen: Cassie, his heart will stop at the sight of you, or he doesn't deserve to live. And, yes, I am aware of the contradiction embodied in that sentence.
- Jane Austen: [she has just kissed him] Did I do that well?
- Tom Lefroy: Very. Very well.
- Jane Austen: I wanted, just once, to do it well.
- Henry Austen: What do you make of Mr. Lefroy?
- Jane Austen: We're honoured by his presence.
- Eliza De Feuillide: You think?
- Jane Austen: He does, with his preening, prancing, Irish-cum-Bond-Street airs.
- Henry Austen: Jane.
- Jane Austen: Well, I call it very high indeed, refusing to dance when there are so few gentleman. Henry, are all your friends so disagreeable?
- Henry Austen: Jane.
- Jane Austen: Where exactly in Ireland does he come from, anyway?
- Tom Lefroy: [coming up behind Jane] Limerick, Miss Austen.
- Tom Lefroy: Miss? Miss? Miss...
- Jane Austen: Austen.
- Tom Lefroy: Mr. Lefroy.
- Jane Austen: Yes, I know, but I am alone.
- Tom Lefroy: Except for me.
- Jane Austen: Exactly.
- Tom Lefroy: I would regard it as a mark of extreme favour if you would stoop to honour me with this next dance.
- Mrs. Radcliffe: Of what do you wish to write?
- Jane Austen: Of the heart.
- Mrs. Radcliffe: Do you know it?
- Jane Austen: Not all of it.
- Mrs. Radcliffe: In time, you will. But even if that fails, that's what the imagination is for.
- Mrs. Radcliffe: Of what do you wish to write?
- Jane Austen: Of the heart.
- Mrs. Radcliffe: Do you know it?
- Jane Austen: Not all of it.
- Tom Lefroy: If there is a shred of truth or justice inside of you, you cannot marry him.
- Jane Austen: Oh no, Mr. Lefroy. Justice, by your own admission, you know little of, truth even less.
- Tom Lefroy: Jane, I have tried. I have tried and I cannot live this lie. Can you?
- Tom Lefroy: [turns Jane's head towards himself] Jane, can you?
- Jane Austen: [her reading for Cassandra] "The boundaries of propriety were vigorously assaulted, as was only right, but not quite breached, as was also right. Nevertheless, she was not pleased."
- Lady Gresham: Monsieur le Comte is not here to pay his respects?
- Eliza De Feuillide: A prior engagement, ma'am, Monsieur le Comte was obliged to pay his respects to Madame le Guillotine.
- Jane Austen: [at Laverton Fair] Trouble here enough.
- Tom Lefroy: And freedom, the freedom of men. Do not you envy it?
- Jane Austen: But I have the intense pleasure of observing it so closely.
- Jane Austen: A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.
- Jane Austen: [reading Pride and Prejudice] "She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was a union that must have been to the advantage of both. By her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance. But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was."
- Tom Lefroy: If you wish to practice the art of fiction, to be considered the equal of a masculine author, experience is vital.