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Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde Quotes

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Famous Jasper Fforde Quotes

“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 anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...”

EvilMoneyGoodWickednessAvariceExpertRareDetestableDilutesLoathsome
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done. And it's our job to stop them.”

HumorFantasyMysteryMythologyDubious
Book:The Fourth Bear
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“Miltons were, on the whole, the most enthusiastic poet followers. A flick through the London telephone directory would yield about four thousand John Miltons, two thousand William Blakes, a thousand or so Samuel Colleridges, five hundred Percy Shelleys, the same of Wordsworth and Keats, and a handful of Drydens. Such mass name-changing could have problems in law enforcement. Following an incident in a pub where the assailant, victim, witness, landlord, arresting officer and judge had all been called Alfred Tennyson, a law had been passed compelling each namesake to carry a registration number tattooed behind the ear. It hadn't been well received--few really practical law-enforcement measures ever are.”

NamesFollowersPoetsLaw Enforcement
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“Until you get into the swing of it, play her subtly different on alternate readings. Hamlet's been doing it for years. Of course, he has twenty-six different ways of playing himself, but then he's had a lot of practice. In fact, I don't think even he knows his motivation any more- unless you count confusing readers and giving useful employment to Shakespearean scholars.”

CharacterMotivationHamlet
Book:One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
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“magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy that can be tapped by those gifted enough, using a variety of techniques that center on layered spelling, mumbled incantations, and a burst of concentrated thought channeled through the index fingers. The technical name for this energy is "variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force," which doesn't mean anything at all--confused scientists just gave it an important-sounding name so as not to lose face. The usual term is "wizidrical energy," or simply "the crackle.”

FantasyMagicYaJasper Fforde
Book:The Song of the Quarkbeast
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“I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton--go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday--I don't know why--and my father had no name at all--his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...”

NamesIdentityTime TravelDaysExistance
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“I liked him, but since his particular field of interest was Remote Suggestion--the skill of projecting thoughts into people's heads from a distance--I didn't know whether I actually liked him or he was just suggesting I like him, which was both creepy and unethical. In fact, the whole Remote Suggestion or "seeding" idea had been banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient in promoting talent less boy bands, which had until then been something of a mystery.”

HumorMagicBoy Bands
Book:The Song of the Quarkbeast
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“«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».”

EmozioniThursday NextGrigioIl Caso Jane EyreLanden Parke Laine
Author:Jasper Fforde
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“There are two schools of thought about the resilience of time. The first is that time is highly volatile, with every small event altering the possible outcome of the earth's future. The other view is that time is rigid, and no matter how hard you try, it will always spring back toward a determined present. Myself, I do not worry about such trivialities. I simply sell ties to anyone who wants to buy one...”

TimeFutureTiesPresentRigidTrivialitiesVolatile
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“Tell us a weird idea you've come up with that's totally out there.' 'Well,' said the author, 'I made George Formby president-for-life of Great Britain.' 'Who's George Formby?' asked Tiger. 'What's Great Britain? asked Boo. 'Okay,' he said, 'here's another: a book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.' 'I think that's been done', said the Troll. 'Everyone's always retelling nursery rhymes. I mean, it's not a massive stretch, is it?' 'How about a social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision?' 'Better,' I said. 'is there a sequel?' 'Don't you start.”

HumourSelf AwarenessSurrealismHumourousSelf Deprecating
Book:The Great Troll War
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“The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...”

ArtMilitaryCrimePoliceUnusualTime TravelWeirdDetectivesLiteraryRestrictedAntiterrorismSpecialized
Book:The Eyre Affair
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