“My temper began to rise -- always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.”

“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!”

“You many have noticed I have a temper ... but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.”

“Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like.”

“I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!”

“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.”

“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.”