Quotes from Jasper Fforde

People say we're just Renaissancites causing trouble, but I've seen Baroque kids, Raphaelites, Romantics and Mannerists here tonight. It's a massive show of classical artistic unity against these frivolous bastards who cower beneath the safety of the word 'progress.' It's not just—

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 greys and I don't do so well on the mid-tones.

I'm fine, I said, which is what people who aren't fine always say.

You're very patronizing," I pointed out. "Very clever of you to notice, girlie. Have

You like economics, don't you?' I asked. 'Everyone should know the basics,' said the Princess. 'Lasting peace will only be brought about through economic means - we should be trading with the Trolls rather than fighting them.

You're a good man." He smiled. "No, I'm an average man . . . with a truly extraordinary wife.

a curious sense of uncomfortable familiarity, the feeling you might get when a long-forgotten school bully hails you as an old friend.

Why dig a hole in the garden, when potatoes grow wild in Finland?

cats aren't really friendly; they're just cozying up to the dominant life form as a hedge against extinction.

You're very patronizing," I pointed out. "Very clever of you to notice, girlie. Have a look at this.

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... Tie seller in Victoria, June 1983

Gaps. I loathe gaps. Gaps in doors, gaps in windows, gaps in bathroom tiles, long gaps between sequels to books. But you know which gaps I hate the most?

Negligible Senescence…

It began to darken. Not the darkness that was already within the yateveo but an enveloping darkness, even blacker than the night but without depth or time. this was it. And as far as reporting what death was like, I can use only one word: colorless. But oddly, that wasn't quite it. After what could have been anything between a couple of seconds and a century, I saw a dim sliver of light open up in front of me, and I believed, for a moment, that I was about to be reborn.

The safest course was actually the simplest – do nothing at all, and hope everything turns out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefit of simplicity, and a long tradition.

Drowning isn't the only way water can kill you.

Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstance.

It's a whole new different alternative kettle of fish here, y'know.

Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners ...

Another one of your quippy japes?

You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry

What is without dispute...is that the readers need [the BookWorld] just as much as we need them—to bring order to their apparent chaos, if nothing else.

I'm not mad, I'm just . . . well, differently moraled, that's all.

There was something she wasn't telling me, but I had to trust her—only a fool ignores a local guide. "Okay