Franz Marie Cruz’s Diary

Kris Aquino is the cover of this month’s Preview and so on a whim I purchased a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine instead which unfortunately turned out to be a mistake. (the last issue of Cosmo I bought was 2-3 or 4 years ago until I got tired of the same articles which they try to redo unsuccessfully every month,) Cosmo through the years has not changed. I daresay it has gone worse. Why? (1) Shaina Magdangal, this month’s cover girl, just turned 18. Shouldn’t she be gracing some Teens magazine instead? In my opinion, She has yet much to accomplish to be labeled a Cosmo girl, personal and professional life. There are so many beautiful and exemplary women in the world and in our country, why does our magazine/s seem to say we have ran out of them? (2) Is Cosmo even a fashion magazine? Who is their fashion editor because frankly the clothes in it were very ordinary, uninspiring, uncreative, boring and too ghastly to be even published on a glossy paper full page! Needless to say, I would have been happier if I had spent my P125 on a grande signature iced chocolate from Starbucks instead.

Mrs. Austen: Affection is desirable. Money is absolutely indispensable!

Jane Austen: If I marry, I want it to be out of affection. Like my mother.
Mrs. Austen: And I have to dig up my own bloody potatoes!

Tom Lefroy: How can you, of all people, dispose of yourself without affection?
Jane Austen: How can I dispose of myself with it?

Mrs. Austen: JANE!
Lady Gresham: What is she doing?
Mr. Wisley: Writing.
Lady Gresham: Can anything be done about it?

Tom Lefroy: What value will there ever be in life, if we aren’t together?

Jane Austen: My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.

Tom Lefroy: If you wish to practice the art of fiction, to be considered the equal of a masculine author, then your horizons must be… widened.

Tom Lefroy: A metropolitan mind may be less susceptible to extended juvenile self-regard.

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.

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.

Jane Austen: [regarding Mr. Wisley] His small fortune will not buy me.
Eliza De Feuillide: What will buy you, cousin?

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.

Tom Lefroy: Good God. There’s writing on both sides of those pages.

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: Was I deficient in propriety?
Jane Austen: Why did you do that?
Tom Lefroy: Couldn’t waste all those expensive boxing lessons.

Mr. Wisley: Sometimes affection is a shy flower that takes time to blossom.

Eliza De Feuillide: What trouble we take to make them like us when we like them.

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?

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.

Tom Lefroy: I am yours, heart and soul. Much good that is.
Jane Austen: Let me decide that.

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.

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.

Tom Lefroy: I depend entirely on…
Jane Austen: On your uncle. And I depend on you. What will you do?
Tom Lefroy: What I must.

John Warren: And the famous Mrs. Radcliffe, is she as Gothic as her novels?
Jane Austen: Not in externals. But her internal landscape is, I suspect, quite picturesque.
Mr. Wisley: True of us all.

Rev Austen: Jane should have not the man who offers the best price but the man she wants.

Tom Lefroy: Miss Austen…
Jane Austen: Yes?
Tom Lefroy: Goodnight.

[to Jane]

Lucy Lefroy: [Interrupting Tom and Jane] What kind of trouble?
Jane Austen: All sorts of trouble.

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.

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?

Eliza De Feuillide: Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice

Rev Austen: Nothing destroys spirit like poverty.