English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

- Jane Gardam

Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.

- Jane Gardam

I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.

- Jane Gardam

The complexion of a novelist is seldom rosy (Paul Bailey once announced to a heavy-hearted audience of novelists at PEN that we have always been an u…

- Jane Gardam

I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.

- Jane Gardam

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.

- Jane Gardam

Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

- Jane Gardam

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

- Jane Gardam