Jasper Fforde Quotes

DCI Horner's advice to Jack Spratt: "Remember, m'boy," his old boss had said, eyes twinkling, "that if anyone tries to get the better of you, stand up straight and say to yourself in an imperious air, 'I am the new Mrs. de Winter now!' You'll find it works wonders.

In any regime there is always something that one should agree with, and in Shades there are quite a few notions that, on the face of it, seem like a good thing - the strict adherence to good manners, the fact that learning a musical instrument is compulsory, as is dancing, performing musicals and an hour's Useful Work every day in order to properly discharge your duty to society. But a cage is still a cage, irrespective of the nature of its bars.

I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.

Death and the end of one's life are two very different things indeed.

Don't let anyone tell you the future is already written. The best any prophet can do is to give you the most likely version of future events. It is up to us to accept the future for what it is, or change it. It is easy to go with the flow; it takes a person of singular courage to go against it.

…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently? What do you mean, odd?' Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.

The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings.

This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That's Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can't keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I got Oedipus off the incest charge--technicality, of course--he didn't know it was his mother at the time.

I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.

Writing needs to be practiced; there is a limit to how much can be gleaned from a teacher or a manual. The true essence of writing is out there, in the world, and inside, within yourself. To write, you have to give.

If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.' 'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?' 'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.

Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.

I've never been averse to a little risk - after all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement.

Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one's person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred - shockingly - with the handle of a fork.

He set fire to some potatoes, then cooked some undelivered post in the embers." - Dad "Did he now? What a strange fellow. I would have done it the other way around." - Stafford

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

I collect ex-boyfriends -- and more than five, at last count.

Do you really think you'd win a PR war against a bunch of committed librarians?' He thought about this, but he knew I was right. The libraries were a treasured institution and so central to everyday life that government and commerce rarely did anything that might upset them.Some say they were more powerful than the military, or, if not, they were certainly quieter. As they say: Don't mess with librarians. Only they use a stronger word than 'mess'.

To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

You many have noticed I have a temper ... but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.

I loved him, officer. More than any woman ever loved an egg.

That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd.

Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment--the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.

Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.

Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.

the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.

I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable form of narcissus.

Almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon.

Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.

For an author just starting out, you've got to deliver the goods every year or sooner or people will forget you or you will lose momentum. There is a contract that exists between author and reader.

Journeys up the Metaphoric River are hugely enjoyable and highly recommended. Since every genre is nourished by its heady waters, a paddle steamer can take even the most walk-shy tourists to their chosen destination. As a bonus, there is traditionally at least one murder on board each trip--a "consideration" to the head steward will ensure that it is not you.

I work very much on the principle that anything created by mankind has mischief and error hardwired into its inception.

I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.

If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.

Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.

Sorry," [Hamlet] said, rubbing his temples. "I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything.

The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.

The universe always moves from an ordered state to a disordered one; that a glass may fall to the ground and shatter yet you never see a broken glass reassemble itself and then jump back on the table.

We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.

If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad.

Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.

Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.

The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet says...it's payback time!

Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts – and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field – is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good.