"There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face."
— Karen Joy Fowler

"I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter."
— Karen Joy Fowler

"Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"Dean coughed helpfully. Somewhere in the cough was the word “persuasion.” He was throwing Mo a lifeline.
Mo preferred to go down. “I haven’t actually read any Austen. I’m more into mysteries, crime fiction, courtroom stuff.” This was disappointing, but not damning. On the other hand it was a failing; on the other, manfully owned up to. If only Mo had stopped there.
“I don’t read much women’s stuff. I like a good plot,” he said.
Prudie finished her drink and set her glass down so hard you could hear it hit. “Austen can plot like a son of a bitch,” she said. “Bernadette, I believe you were telling us about your first husband.”
“I could start with my second. Or the one after that,” Bernadette offered. Down with plot! Down with Mo!
"
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Without our listening, all the stories are the same story."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery."
— Karen Joy Fowler

"“What should we read next?” Bernadette asked. “Pride and Prejudice is my favorite.
“So let’s do that,” Sylvia said.
“Are you sure, dear?” Jocelyn asked,
“I am. It’s time. Anyway, Persuasion has the dead mother. I don’t want to subject Prudie to that now. The mother in Pride and Prejudice on the other hand…”
“Don’t give anything away,” Grigg said. “I haven’t read it yet.”
Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice.
Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice.
Grigg had read The Mysteries of Udolpho and God knows how much science fiction – there were books all over the cottage – but he’d never found the time or inclination to read Pride and Prejudice. We really didn’t know what to say."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"I've often been accused of harnessing genre strategies to mainstream ends. I do concede that relationships, characters, and introspection are my primary interest. The fanciful is of a secondary order of importance; I usually use it to approach the large issue of perception, so that my fantastical elements, while intended as real within the stories, occupy some borderland between reality and psychology."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Black Glass: Stories)

"A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"The Indians did not like to see anything odd -- a white squirrel, for instance. . . . They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil. . . . And the Indians put a great deal of faith in dreams."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come."
— Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary)

"“Poor Elinor! Willoughby on one side, Brandon on the other. She is quite entre deux feux.” Prudie had a bit of lipstick on her teeth, or else it was wine. Jocelyn wanted to lean across and wipe it off with a napkin, the way she did when Sahara needed tidying. But she restrained herself; Prudie didn’t belong to her. The fire sculpted Prudie’s face, left the hollows of her cheeks hollow, brightened her deep-set eyes. She wasn’t pretty like Allegra, but she was attractive in an interesting way. She drew your eye. She would probably age well, like Angelica Houston. If only she would stop speaking French. Or go to France, where it would be less noticeable."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"I made tiny newspapers of ant events, stamp-sized papers at first, then a bit bigger, too big for ants, it distressed me, but I couldn’t fit the stories otherwise and I wanted real stories, not just lines of something that looked like writing. Anyway, imagine how small an ant paper would really be. Even a stamp would have looked like a basketball court.
I imagine political upheavals, plots and coups d e’tat, and I reported on them. I think I may have been reading a biography of Mary Queen of Scots at the time….
Anyway, there was this short news day for the ants. I’d run out of political plots, or I was bored with them. So I got a glass of water and I created a flood. The ants scrambled for safety, swimming for their lives. I was kind of ashamed, but it made for good copy. I told myself I was bringing excitement into their usual humdrum. The next day, I dropped a rock on them. It was a meteorite from outer space. They gathered around it and ran up and over it; obviously they didn’t know what to do. It prompted three letters to the editor.
"
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"It was long past time to change the subject. “The boy playing the bagpipes is really good,” Prudie said.
If only she’d said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. “Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something.”
Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school for her musical ability. Maybe pigs could jig.
"
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Mother was just as glad to have me out of the house and harm’s way. She did give me some advice. You can always tell a cult from a religion, she said, because a cult is just a set of rules that lets certain men get laid.
"
— Karen Joy Fowler

"Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding."
— Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)

"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come."
— Karen Joy Fowler