Jasper Fforde

“I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane.”

“Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.”

“Don't get in a blue car on a Thursday.''Which Thursday?''Any Thursday.''What kind of car?''A blue one. On a Thursday.''Okay.”

“It was written in the ancient RUNIX spell-language, and is read-only and can't be modified.”

“Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you're cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right's sake - it's what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well-spent - giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference.”

“You are the best, most loving, supportive family anyone could ever have," I said through my sobs. "I'm so sorry if I'm a burden."They all told me not to be so bloody silly, I told them not to swear, and Landen gave me a handkerchief for my tears.”

“Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to each of those who read it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people they've met, read or seen before - far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader.”

“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.”

“Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day.”

“Humans are the most gloriously bizarre creatures.”

“This is Fiction, and the truth is whatever you make it. You can interpret the situation in any way you want, and all of the scenarios could be real -- and what's more, depending on how you act now, any one of them could become real.”

“There is much unexplained in the world. It behoves one to be wary at all times. Just when you think you've got the hang of it, along comes string theory, collateralised debt obligations or Björk's new album, and bam! You're as confused as you were when you first started.”

“To fail spectacularly is a loser's paradise.”

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

“«Questo lo so» esclamò Landen «e ne sono del tutto d'accordo. Mi piacerebbe tanto capire perché ti sei tirata indietro. Dai la caccia a super criminali, all'OPS affronti rischi enormi, disubbidisci agli ordini per recuperare i tuoi compagni feriti sotto un intenso fuoco di artiglieria, eppure...»«Ho capito. Non saprei. Probabilmente le decisioni su questioni di vita o di morte sono più facili da prendere perché sono radicali, bianco o nero. Le affronto meglio perché è più facile. Le emozioni umane, be'... sono un'infinita gradazione di grigi e io non mi trovo bene con le mezze tinte».”

“If you ever think you might want a career in politics, Inspector, think again. It's merely a continuous and mostly vain attempt to keep several groups of people with opposing needs and agendas happy, and knowing in your heart of hearts that you cannot, and being lambasted for you hard work in the bargain.”

“Love isn't sensible, Red. I think that's the point.”

“Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.”

“Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic.”

“The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.”

“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.”

“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'...”

“As it says on the Tshirts:'I don't scare easily - I'm a librarian.', which was the polite version of the original:'Don't give me any of your shit - I'm a librarian.”

“This must have been how it all began with Chymes,” sighed Jack. “A smallomission on one case, an ‘embellishment’ on the next. The question is not aboutwhat’s best but what’s right. Chymes had confused the two and compromised notonly his own integrity but that of the police—and the due process of law.”

“Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.”

“Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Don't anyone move. . . I think we've driven into a mimefield.”

“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.”

“It is written.”

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

“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.”

“Librarying is a harder profession than the public realizes, he said. People think it's all rubber stamps, knowing that Dewey 521 is celestial mechanics and saying 'Try looking under fiction' sixty eight times a day.”

“A surfeit of information often hides an untruth,” he said, with annoying clarity.”

“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.”

“Everything comes to an end. A good bottle of wine, a summer’s day, a long-running sitcom, one’s life, and eventually our species. The question for many of us is not that everything will come to an end but when. And can we do anything vaguely useful until it does?”

“I wished I could share my own optimism.”

“Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.”

“2.3.06.02.087: Unnecessary sharpening of pencils constitutes a waste of public resources, and will be punished as appropriate.”

“«Silenzio in aula!» strillò il Coniglio Bianco con voce stridula.«Mozzatele il capo!» strillò la Regina.Il Re inforcò gli occhiali e si guardò intorno inquieto, per scoprire chi aveva parlato. La Regina gli diede di gomito e fece un cenno nella mia direzione.«Tu, laggiù!» disse il Re. «Dovrai parlare molto presto, miss, miss...»«Next» interloquì Coniglio Bianco dopo aver consultato la sua pergamena.«Come?» replicò il Re un po' confuso. «Abbiamo già finito?»«No, Vostra Maestà» rispose paziente il Coniglio Bianco «il suo nome è Next. Thursday Next».«E magari pensi di essere spiritosa?»”

“The dangerously high level of stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning. The reason for the crisis was clear: Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste and his ruling Commonsense Party had been discharging their duties with a reckless degree of responsibility that bordered on inspired sagacity. Instead of drifting from one crisis to the next and appeasing the nation with a steady stream of knee-jerk legislation and headline-grabbing but arguably pointless initiatives, they had been resolutely building a raft of considered long-term plans that concentrated on unity, fairness and tolerance. It was a state of affairs deplored by Mr. Alfredo Traficcone, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, who wanted to lead the nation back to the safer ground of uniformed stupidity.”

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

“Unless the hole is MEANT to be square,' I said with a sudden erudition that surprised me, 'in which case, all the round pegs are the ones that are wrong, and if the ROUND hole is one that is not meant to be square, then the square ones will, no, hang on--''Shame,' said the historian, 'and you were doing so well.”

“Quark!”

“Quark!"--the Quarkbeast”

“If it takes us 10 years to get into the shit, it will take us 20 to get out.And the journey starts NOW.”

“Do I have to talk to insane people?""You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.”

“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?”

“If you even *need* a government, added Stig, "you are a life-form flawed beyond redemption.”