Lost in Austen Quotes

Amanda Price: I'm not hung up about Darcy. I do not sit at home with the pause button on Colin Firth in clingy pants, okay? I love the love story. I love Elizabeth. I love the manners and language and the courtesy. It's become part of who I am and what I want. I'm saying that I have standards.

Frankie: Oh, you have standards, pet. I hope they help you on with your coat when you're 70.

Mr. Bingley: Darcy regards all forms of sudden locomotion as emblematic of ill-breeding. Hunting, tennis, rising precipitately from a chair...

Mr. Darcy: When Miss Price and I dance, sir, there shall be nothing sudden.

Amanda Price: I can't dance this sort of dance.

Mr. Darcy: Nor I. Together we shall make a shambles. But we shall do it with such authority that everyone will stare at us to learn the step.

Mr. Bingley: I'm drawn to you! I'm a man.

Amanda Price: And I'm a woman! And I'm drawn... to other women.

Mr. Bingley: You mean there really are ladies who... steer the punt from the Cambridge end?

Mr. Bingley: [after Amanda sings 'Downtown'] Brava, Miss Price! And whenever life is gettin' me down, I shall be sure to go 'downtown'. Eh, Darcy?

Mr. Darcy: With alacrity.

Mr. Darcy: If you wound Bingley you will find my displeasure baleful and entirely unrelenting, for my...

Amanda Price: "Good opinion once lost is lost forever." Yes, I know.

Mr. Darcy: About Miss Bennet. You lied. Why?

Amanda Price: God, I know you're supposed to be abrupt but that's a bit stark.

Mr. Darcy: I'm always stark with liars.

Amanda Price: [thinking] Elizabeth, what can I say? You're welcome to him. Miserable sod.

Caroline Bingley: Money, Miss Price. The fortune to which you aspire in an immediate instance may pass you by. But I am certain you shall not starve.

Amanda Price: No, I don't suppose I shall on 27000 a year.

Mr. Wickham: Miss Price, I fear that your life with Mr. Collins may be short of gaeity. If you find yourself nonplussed by the anticipated pleasures of married life, call upon me and I shall redress the deficit.

Amanda Price: Full marks for trying, George, but I wouldn't have my deficit redressed by you if you were the last man on earth.

Mrs. Bennet: Are you not happy that Jane is wed to Mr. Collins?

Mr. Bennet: Happy? That my kindest, prettiest daughter has embarked upon an adulthood of suffication to such a preening Caliban? Happy, Madam - that she should live in subjugation to such an enormity? I would rather sleep in a drain than consent to be happy!

Amanda Price: I try not to judge people I've never met

Mr. Darcy: You are a philosopher, Miss Price. I would I could be like you.

Amanda Price: Certainly you would benefit an occupation of some kind. You have no function, Mr. Darcy. No purpose.

Mr. Darcy: Of course not. What a disgusting idea. That is the raison d'etre of society. We must be seen to be unoccupied.

Georgiana: This lady who's coming to stay... Are you going to marry her?

Mr. Darcy: That's an absolutely outrageous question, Georgiana. And I really should chastise you for it.

Georgiana: You wouldn't dare.

Mr. Darcy: You're right, I wouldn't.

Mr. Darcy: Amanda. It means 'she who must be loved'.

Amanda Price: You must not. You must not...

Mr. Darcy: Wherefore must I not? Who is to judge us? I have laboured so long in the service of propriety.

Amanda Price: Elizabeth. I am not Elizabeth. The entire world will... hate me.

Mr. Darcy: Were that true, Amanda, I would fight the world! You are the one I love.

Amanda Price: [after Mr. Darcy emerges from the water] I am having a bit of a strange post-modern moment here.

Mr. Darcy: Is that agreeable?

Amanda Price: Oh, yes. Yes.

Caroline Bingley: Charles told me your secret. It is my secret too. I shall get my paws on Darcy and I shall marry him because it is correct, and necessary and expected by everyone including God. But the physical society of men is something I have never sought. I shall endure it with Darcy because endurance is a speciality of our sex. But the poetry of Sappho is the only music that shall ever touch my heart, though I have yet to play upon the um... instrument myself.

Amanda Price: [Thinking, after Caroline leaves] Goodness. Jane Austen would be fairly suprised to find she'd written that!

Amanda Price: [Thinking, referring to Caroline] You think you're the girl for him! Step off, Caroline. You conniving, smirking...

Amanda Price: Bumface!

[Clattering on dining table]

Amanda Price: Did I say that out loud?

Mr. Darcy: [Bursts into room] Ah! Well met, well met! Bingley, Miss Lydia and I have just now returned from the opera...

Mr. Bingley: Darcy.

Mr. Darcy: ...And the problem with the opera of course, is one cannot...

Mr. Bingley: [interrupts] Sir, will you have done? Your subterfuge is well-meaning but it is puerile and demeans us all. There is no opera in Hammersmith. You've just arrived from god-knows-where, that much is plain.

Amanda Price: Wickham. You are a bastard, but you are the right bastard at the right time.

Mr. Wickham: One does one's best.

Mr. Darcy: Are my wits disordered by opium? Where is this dreadful place?

Amanda Price: This is London. My London.

Elizabeth Bennet: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley? I am your wife.

Mr. Darcy: I do not recall marrying you, Madam. I think I would have noticed if I had.

Elizabeth Bennet: We have been married nearly 200 years.

Michael: What do you mean Darcy? Darcy's some ponce in a book! Some todger-twitching nancy boy!

Mr. Darcy: What is this curious person? Is it some sort of village idiot... or a clown?

Amanda Price: I need to use the telephone. I need to call my boyfriend.

Elizabeth Bennet: Of course.

[hands Amanda a mobile phone]

Amanda Price: Elizabeth Bennet is lending me her mobile...

Elizabeth Bennet: The door does not oblige.

Amanda Price: It bloody well does oblige! This is Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet coming through for God's sake!

Mr. Wickham: Where am I to sleep?

Amanda Price: I am grateful to you, George. But where you... put yourself tonight is not my concern. Perhaps you should address yourself to Mr. Collins.

Mr. Wickham: I doubt Mr. Collins is equipped to give me satisfaction with regards to this enquiry.

Amanda Price: Then you must take matters into your own hands. Mine are full.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Well? What do you have to say for yourself?

Mrs. Bennet: I say this. You are a prig, Madam, a pander and a common bully. And you cheat at cards! Do you suppose you may enter my house and brandish your hat at me thus? I have a mind to turn you upside down and use you to scrape out Ambrosia's sty.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Madam, I take my leave of you.

Mrs. Bennet: Do! Or I shall take you out and set to scraping! Scrape, scrape, scrape, I shall go!

Mr. Bennet: Tally-ho, wife!

Mr. Collins: Mrs. Bennet, you must desist!

Jane Bennet: Oh be quiet, you silly man. Do you suppose Mama would permit her daughters to be married to your brothers when before her very eyes is the specimen of you?

Mr. Bennet: [after Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins leave] Tonight Mrs. Bennet, with your permission, I think I shall sleep in our bedroom.

Elizabeth Bennet: I'm sorry. It's just I see Jane and...

Amanda Price: You think marriage to Darcy will be like marriage to Collins? Look, in the book you don't exactly hit it off - to begin with. Just keep talking. From the talking comes the love.

Mr. Darcy: [surprised] Miss Price.

Amanda Price: Yes. We should celebrate. You asked me a question and I answered it. And we didn't have an argument about it.

Mr. Darcy: I did not ask you a question. I made an observation, 'Miss Price'. The confirmation of your identity was entirely superfluous. As a result we are now arguing about it. And therefore, you are wrong.

Amanda Price: That's so sweet. You're actually trying to make me laugh.

Mr. Darcy: Yes. It shall not occur again.

Amanda Price: And you're smiling.

Mr. Darcy: No, no. I only smile in private... when nobody is looking.

Amanda Price: You're better than this! I know you are because I've had you in my head, Fitzwilliam Darcy, since I was 12 years old. So why are you behaving like such a total git? Jane has no money. So what? Bingley's got stacks! What right have you to trash their love because of an... accident of birth?

Mr. Darcy: There is no accident in birth.

Amanda Price: Do you know what I am so angry?

Mr. Darcy: You were born thus.

Amanda Price: I've been in love with your life for 14 years. Cut my heart out, Darcy. It's your name written on it with Elizabeth's. God Almighty, here you are! One half the greatest love story ever told. You! And do you know what? You don't deserve her.

Mr. Darcy: Is this interview concluded? It is so difficult to tell.

Amanda Price: You are such a disappointment, I can hardly bear to look at you!

Mr. Darcy: A deprivation I shall endure as stoically as I can.

Amanda Price: You're so relentless unpleasant! I just can't get at the real you!

Mr. Darcy: Madam! Behold, Fitzwilliam Darcy. I am what I am. If you find yourself unable to 'get at' an alternative version, I must own to being glad. I despise the intrusions of a woman so singularly dedicated to mendacity, disorder and lewdness. They repel me. You repel me. You are an abomination, Madam. Good afternoon to you.

Amanda Price: [after Darcy leaves] If I dream about him tonight, I shall be really angry! I'm going to dream about him. Well, I hope in my dream you choke. Hateful man!

Amanda Price: You wish to speak to me, sir?

Mr. Darcy: I am... concerned.

Amanda Price: I don't understand.

Mr. Darcy: You came to this house knowing you'll be brought to Lady Catherine's. Knowing I would be there, knowing full well the abysmal disregard in which I hold you. Why, when I am, as you insist, so relentlessly unpleasant to you, do you persist in seeking me out?

Amanda Price: But I didn't seek you out. You came to me!

Mr. Darcy: Why?

Amanda Price: I don't know!

Mr. Darcy: You must know. I do not, and my lack of comprehension is tormenting me.

Amanda Price: Mrs Collins needs me. Good night.

[Darcy grabs hold of Amanda, and leans forward as if to kiss her]

Amanda Price: [apprehensively] Are you quite sure this is what you mean to do?

Jane Bennet: He is in love with you.

Amanda Price: No, he can't be! That... doesn't make sense at all. That's crazy. Darcy, okay, and Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne, not Darcy and Amanda Price of W6!

Jane Bennet: Lizzie did not come to my wedding. She has detached herself from the fortunes of this family. It is the thing that she has chosen. You must acknowledge this, Miss Price, of your own choosing. I think you are a good person and you deserve happiness!

Mr. Darcy: All's well, Mr. Collins? The birds are that way...

Mr. Collins: Yes, yes!

Amanda Price: Mr. Collins has had the unusual good fortune to shoot a peacock.