INTERVIEWER
You have said elsewhere that the authors you have learned most from were Jane Austen and Proust. What did you learn from Jane Austen technically?
FORSTER
I learned the possibilities of domestic humor. I was more ambitious than she was, of course; I tried to hitch it on to other things.
INTERVIEWER
And from Proust?
FORSTER
I learned ways of looking at character from him. The modern subconscious way. He gave me as much of the modern way as I could take. I couldn’t read Freud or Jung myself; it had to be filtered to me.