Jasper Fforde Quotes

The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.

It wasn’t going to be hard…it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I'd done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.

To espresso or to latte, that is the question...whether 'tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain...or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache.

He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

You speak baby gibberish?' asked Jack. 'Fluently. The adult-education center ran a course, and I have a lot of time on my hands.' 'So what did he say?' 'I don't know.' 'I thought you said you spoke gibberish?' 'I do. But your baby doesn't. I think he's speaking either pre-toddler nonsense, a form of infact burble or an obscure dialect of gobbledygook. In any event, I can't understand a word he's saying.' 'Oh.

A surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.

There is a certain degree of steampunkishness that creeps into my books.

Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.

Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.

I wished I could share my own optimism.

We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired.

People who read my books have an open mind when it comes to new, bizarre, interesting and exciting ideas.

How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next- This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. “Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text- or I swear I’ll wring your neck!

Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world,” I said, “but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be—it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.

Everything comes to an end. A good bottle of wine, a summer’s day, a long-running sitcom, one’s life, and eventually our species. The question for many of us is not that everything will come to an end but when. And can we do anything vaguely useful until it does?

Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.

I'll tell you what love is" I said, "It is blind devotion, unquestioning self humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your heart and soul to the smiter.

It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.

If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.

What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?” “I don’t know—avant verrais?

If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher.

The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.

You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library. She pointed to the shelf opposite. Over there was Catch-22, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.

Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it's easier. Human emotions, well. . .they're just a fathomless collection of grays and I don't do so well on the midtones.

Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now, and we could look to a brighter future of long-term thought--and more reading.

Words are like leaves,. . .like people really, fond of their own society.

He spent his life immersed in books to the cost of everything else, even personal relationships. "Friends," he'd once said, "are probably great, but I have forty thousands friends of my own already, and each of them needs my attention.

the best lies to tell are the ones people want to believe

I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer.

To each our own Hamlet.

Our notions of self-determination are, on the whole, something of a myth. We are governed almost exclusively by our own peculiar habits, which makes those who rail against them that much more remarkable.

How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark." "A whale isn't a fish, Thursday." "A whale shark is--sort of." "All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish." "A crayfish isn't a fish." "A starfish, then." "Still not a fish." "This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.

Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.

The government was to raise the duty on cheese to 83 percent, an unpopular move that would doubtless have the more militant citizens picketing cheese shops.

Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.

Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic.

Writing is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes.

I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.

The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition.

Defiance through compliance.

Love isn't sensible, Red. I think that's the point.

Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.

...the landscape inside Lord of the Rings was so stunning and so stupendous that it could be absorbed as a form of nourishment.

Whenever I'm giving talks, I always ask people to think of the most obscure questions because I enjoy those the most. I always get the same questions: Why does Pickwick say "plock" and will there be a movie? I like the really obscure questions because there's so much in the books. There are tons and tons of references and I like when people get the little ones and ask me about them. It's good for the audience [and also] they realize there's more there.