Explore Quotes by Jasper Fforde

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

Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one's person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred - shockingly - with the handle of a fork.

Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.

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.

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

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

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.

Almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon.

Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work - the writer might have died long ago.

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.

Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

The name is Schitt," he replied. "Jack Schitt.

I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.

Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.

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

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.

Were you listening to a word I said ' 'I kind of switched off when you drew breath.

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.

Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.

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

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