Jasper Fforde Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous.

Jasper Fforde
Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

Jasper Fforde
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.

Jasper Fforde
Quarkbeasts, for all their fearsome looks, are obedient to a fault. They are nine-tenths velociraptor and kitchen blender and one-tenth Labrador. It was the Labrador tenth that I valued most.

Jasper Fforde
Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

Jasper Fforde
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!

Jasper Fforde
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.

Jasper Fforde
You nearly killed eight people!" I managed to gasp out loud. "My count was closer to twelve," returned Havisham as she opened the door. "And anyhow, you can't nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not.

Jasper Fforde
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.

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

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
If 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
Without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted.

Jasper Fforde
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.

Jasper Fforde
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.

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
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.

Jasper Fforde
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.

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

Jasper Fforde
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.

Jasper Fforde
A good butler should save his employer's life at least once a day.

Jasper Fforde
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.

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

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

Jasper Fforde
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.

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

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

Jasper Fforde
Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.

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

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

Jasper Fforde