02UndatedIf the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
03UndatedWhereas 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
04UndatedIf 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
07UndatedI would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
08UndatedMr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
09UndatedDeath doesn't care about personalities - he's more interested in meeting quotas.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
11Undatedthe Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
12UndatedI shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
13UndatedI 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
14UndatedBowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medalsand the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
15UndatedOkay, 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
16UndatedDeath, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
18UndatedI'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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
19UndatedHow about this,' I said. 'We modify our plans with regard to ongoing facts as they become known to us, then remodify them as the situation unfolds. 'You mean make it all up as we go along?' asked Perkins.'Right.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
21UndatedBooks 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
23UndatedVanity's contribution to Fiction in general was an abundance of cheap labour and the occasional blockbuster, which was accepted into Fiction with an apologetic 'gosh, don't know how that happened'.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
24UndatedPretend 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.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
