Top 183 Quotes & Sayings by Jasper Fforde - Page 3

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.

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.

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.

I loved him, officer. More than any woman ever loved an egg.

Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now, and we could look to a brighter future of long-term thought--and more reading.

…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently? What do you mean, odd?' Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.

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!

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

Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or nowing.

...the landscape inside Lord of the Rings was so stunning and so stupendous that it could be absorbed as a form of nourishment.

We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired.

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

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.

Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it's easier. Human emotions, well. . .they're just a fathomless collection of grays and I don't do so well on the midtones.

I have the death sentence in seven genres.

Defiance through compliance.

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

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

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

The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings.

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.

What is there to forgive?. . .Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.

Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.

Words are like leaves,. . .like people really, fond of their own society.

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

I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights.

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

Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.

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

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.

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.

Sorry," [Hamlet] said, rubbing his temples. "I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything.

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

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

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

There is a certain degree of steampunkishness that creeps into my books.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.

"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."

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.

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

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

Social mores change with time, like fashion - who knows where it might all end up? I especially like the idea that waste, impoliteness and overpopulation become "abominations," although I'm not sure recycling one's aunt will ever truly catch on.

Personally I have a great deal of fun doing it, which is an inspiration in itself really. It really allows me to daydream, as in "schooldream" which is daydreaming with ink and get paid for it which is something I don't say to schools when I go in and talk to them.

The best plans are always the simplest.

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.

Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books. 'Impressive, eh?' 'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?' 'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?' 'Yes...?' 'I'm that person.

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.

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

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

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.

This is our siblings of more famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group expalined Loser (Gatsby). That's Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can't keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is a Muggle.

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

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.

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

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

To espresso or to latte, that is the question...whether 'tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain...or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache.

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.

I've never been averse to a little risk - after all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement.