01UndatedSometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
02UndatedMy only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It's kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.' 'I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,' I said. 'You'd kill Tom Stoppard?' 'Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream "I'm not worthy!" if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see—for him and for me.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
05UndatedYou’re talking about gold and silver, cash and securities. I’m talking about the sheer beauty of the land, the value of unpolluted parkland made wild and staying wild forever.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
06UndatedTruly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed -- you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
07UndatedWhat is without dispute...is that the readers need [the BookWorld] just as much as we need them—to bring order to their apparent chaos, if nothing else.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
08UndatedThe front room of his house was what I called 'untidy chic'. Prefects weren't subject to the same Rules on room tidiness, but since no one really enjoyed clutter, a certain style of ordered untidiness was generally considered de couleur for a prefect's room.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
09UndatedMiltons were, on the whole, the most enthusiastic poet followers. A flick through the London telephone directory would yield about four thousand John Miltons, two thousand William Blakes, a thousand or so Samuel Colleridges, five hundred Percy Shelleys, the same of Wordsworth and Keats, and a handful of Drydens. Such mass name-changing could have problems in law enforcement. Following an incident in a pub where the assailant, victim, witness, landlord, arresting officer and judge had all been called Alfred Tennyson, a law had been passed compelling each namesake to carry a registration number tattooed behind the ear. It hadn't been well received--few really practical law-enforcement measures ever are.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
10UndatedEdward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
11UndatedPrices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
12UndatedShe wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
13UndatedWell, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically...impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
14UndatedI was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title."Didn't they split in '70?""Not always. How are things?Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
15UndatedI wasn't particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
16Undated…the known had been so long dwarfed by the unknown that confusion was an easy bedfellow.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
17UndatedMarriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
18UndatedA surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
19UndatedPerhaps it was as well that she had been unconscious for four weeks. She had missed the aftermath, the SO-1 reports, the recriminations, Snood and Tamworth's funerals. She missed everything...except the blame. It was waiting for her when she awoke...Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
20UndatedSo my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
21UndatedI hope that in my books there's an undertone of politics, basic tenets of how we should live.Jasper Fforde / quote ↗
