Best 223 quotes of Jasper Fforde on MyQuotes

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village." "Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?" "Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.

Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.

Aspects that we consider normal today could very well be repugnant in the future - eating animals, for one thing, or abundant choice, or invasive surgery. I was simply trying to demonstrate that what is acceptable today may not be acceptable forever, and vice-versa.

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

Because there's someone else here in East Carmin. Someone hopelessly unsuitable. It's all a really bad idea and will lead to trouble of the worst sort. But no matter what, every minute in her presence makes my life a minute more complete.

...being written by someone who might not quite understand the subconscious nuance of the character leaves us in varying degrees of flatness.

Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.

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

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

Death doesn't care about personalities - he's more interested in meeting quotas.

DCI Horner's advice to Jack Spratt: "Remember, m'boy," his old boss had said, eyes twinkling, "that if anyone tries to get the better of you, stand up straight and say to yourself in an imperious air, 'I am the new Mrs. de Winter now!' You'll find it works wonders.

Death and the end of one's life are two very different things indeed.

Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.

Defiance through compliance.

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

Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.

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.

Don't move," said Sprockett."Mimes don't generally attack unless they are threatened.

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'.

Every book should have a romance.

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?

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

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

For an author just starting out, you've got to deliver the goods every year or sooner or people will forget you or you will lose momentum. There is a contract that exists between author and reader.

For a taste that's a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct.

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

[from the television show,"Evade the Question Time"]At the end of the first round, I will award three points to Mr. Kaine for an excellent nonspecific condemnation, plus one bonus point for blaming the previous government and another for successfully mutating the question to promote the party line. Mr. van de Poste gets a point for a firm rebuttal, but only two points for his condemnation, as he tried to inject an impartial and intelligent observation.

Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. 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 almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good.

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

Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.

Have you ever wondered how nostalgia isn"t what it used to be?

He set fire to some potatoes, then cooked some undelivered post in the embers." - Dad "Did he now? What a strange fellow. I would have done it the other way around." - Stafford

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.

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

How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark." "A whale isn't a fish, Thursday." "A whale shark is--sort of." "All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish." "A crayfish isn't a fish." "A starfish, then." "Still not a fish." "This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.

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

Humpty had always sat on walls, it was his way.

I collect ex-boyfriends -- and more than five, at last count.

I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.

I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.

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.

If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher.

If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.' 'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?' 'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.

If you even think about asking Harry Potter for an autograph, your day ends right now.

If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.

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

I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.