Jasper Fforde Quotes

Social mores change with time, like fashion - who knows where it might all end up? I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become "abominations," although I'm not sure recycling one's aunt will ever truly catch on.

If it's a chimera alert, we just follows the screams.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.

Death doesn't care about personalities - he's more interested in meeting quotas.

Do I have to talk to insane people?" "You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.

Personally I have a great deal of fun doing it, which is an inspiration in itself really. It really allows me to daydream, as in "schooldream" which is daydreaming with ink and get paid for it which is something I don't say to schools when I go in and talk to them.

Librarying is a harder profession than the public realizes, he said. People think it's all rubber stamps, knowing that Dewey 521 is celestial mechanics and saying 'Try looking under fiction' sixty eight times a day.

I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!

Don't move," said Sprockett."Mimes don't generally attack unless they are threatened.

A good butler should save his employer's life at least once a day.

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.

I have the death sentence in seven genres.

Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.

Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work - the writer might have died long ago.

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.

...being written by someone who might not quite understand the subconscious nuance of the character leaves us in varying degrees of flatness.

Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day.

Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.

Because there's someone else here in East Carmin. Someone hopelessly unsuitable. It's all a really bad idea and will lead to trouble of the worst sort. But no matter what, every minute in her presence makes my life a minute more complete.

I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.

Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or nowing.

Have you ever wondered how nostalgia isn"t what it used to be?

For a taste that's a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct.

I don't need you to agree with me," she said quietly." I'll go away happy with a little bit of doubt. Doubt is good. It's an emotion we can build on. Perhaps if we feed it with curiosity it will blossom into something useful, like suspicion - and action.

There is much unexplained in the world. It behooves us to be wary at all times. Just when you think you've got the hang of it, along comes string theory, collateralized debt obligations or Björk's new album, and bam! You're as confused as you were when you first started.

Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.

I was on HPD--Heathcliff Protection Duty--in Wuthering Heights for two years, and believe me, the ProCaths tried everything. I personally saved him from assassination eight times.

Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.

Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.

Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like.

The name is Schitt," he replied. "Jack Schitt.

Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.

Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.

What is there to forgive?. . .Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.

Literary detection and firearms don't really go hand in hand; pen mighter than the sword and so forth.

Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

Were you listening to a word I said ' 'I kind of switched off when you drew breath.

You nearly killed eight people!" I managed to gasp out loud. "My count was closer to twelve," returned Havisham as she opened the door. "And anyhow, you can't nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not.

Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.

The best plans are always the simplest.

If you even think about asking Harry Potter for an autograph, your day ends right now.

Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.

History has rewritten itself so many times I'm not really sure how it was to begin with -- it's a bit like trying to guess the original color of a wall when it's been repainted eight times.

The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia - Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere.

Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books. 'Impressive, eh?' 'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?' 'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?' 'Yes...?' 'I'm that person.