Jasper Fforde Quotes

Perhaps 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
A surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.
Jasper Fforde
Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.
Jasper Fforde
…the known had been so long dwarfed by the unknown that confusion was an easy bedfellow.
Jasper Fforde
Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners ...
Jasper Fforde
I wasn't particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees.
Jasper Fforde
I 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
Well, 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
She 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
Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.
Jasper Fforde
Edward, 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
Miltons 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
The 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
What 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
Truly 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
You’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
Have you ever wondered how nostalgia isn"t what it used to be?
Jasper Fforde
Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners
Jasper Fforde
My 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
Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.
Jasper Fforde
Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
Jasper Fforde
Curiosity is a descending stair…that leads to only who-knows-where.
Jasper Fforde
Pretty?' I said, swivelling in the driver's seat to face him, 'you want to ask me out because I'm pretty?' 'Is there a problem with asking you out because you're pretty?' 'I think you blew it,' said Tiger with a grin. 'You should be asking her out because she's smart, witty, mature beyond her years and every moment in her company makes you want to be a better person - pretty of face should be at the bottom of the list.' 'Oh, blast,' said Perkins despondently. 'It should, shouldn't it?
Jasper Fforde
There is no point in expending good money on the pursuit of an engine that can power aircraft without propellers. What is wrong with airships anyway? They have borne mankind aloft for over a hundred relatively accident-free years and I see no reason to impugn their popularity...
Jasper Fforde
Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.
Jasper Fforde
I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.
Jasper Fforde
You want me to spy on a National Colour operative?''Wow,' she said, 'you got it. I thought I was going to have to explain that one for a lot longer.
Jasper Fforde
Said by Colin the dragon:"It's somewhat bizarre to learn that many of you (humans)think that other humans are somehow different enough to be hated and killed, when in reality you're all all tiresomely similiar in outlook, needs and motivation, and differ only by peculiar habits, generally shaped by geographical circumstance.
Jasper Fforde
Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous.
Jasper Fforde
Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey--and returned.
Jasper Fforde
The course of true love rarely runs smooth.
Jasper Fforde
I am boring, but I'm ok with it. I'm the anchor, the shoulder...I'm an average man...with a truly extraordinary wife
Jasper Fforde
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.
Jasper Fforde
The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...
Jasper Fforde
All of everything came into existence simply because it wanted to be. The big bang wasn't so much a big bang as a hasty dash toward an opportunity to trade nothingness for somethingness. The main contributory factor to the entire universe was a momentary effect in need of a cause.
Jasper Fforde
Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.
Jasper Fforde
Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstances.
Jasper Fforde
You're just a huge romantic at heart, aren't you?""If there's cash involved, I'm anything you want me to be.
Jasper Fforde
No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid--with interest...
Jasper Fforde
There's more to good or bad than what's written in the Rulebook.
Jasper Fforde
Believe me, you're going to have to do much worse than this--in the pursuit of freedom, the innocents will suffer--and at your hands.
Jasper Fforde
Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.
Jasper Fforde
Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.
Jasper Fforde
Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.
Jasper Fforde
I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton--go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday--I don't know why--and my father had no name at all--his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...
Jasper Fforde
In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.
Jasper Fforde
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.
Jasper Fforde
I'm beginning to think you're the sort of person who does a great deal with very little."He meant a liar.
Jasper Fforde
Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.
Jasper Fforde
I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can't be usual to go to your favorite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.
Jasper Fforde
Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.
Jasper Fforde
Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.
Jasper Fforde
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.
Jasper Fforde
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 anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...
Jasper Fforde
True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...
Jasper Fforde
The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they’ve written, they write some more.
Jasper Fforde
PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done.And it's our job to stop them.
Jasper Fforde
The best plans are always the simplest.
Jasper Fforde
Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic.
Jasper Fforde
magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy that can be tapped by those gifted enough, using a variety of techniques that center on layered spelling, mumbled incantations, and a burst of concentrated thought channeled through the index fingers. The technical name for this energy is "variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force," which doesn't mean anything at all--confused scientists just gave it an important-sounding name so as not to lose face. The usual term is "wizidrical energy," or simply "the crackle.
Jasper Fforde