Quotes from Jasper Fforde

I'm sorry," I said. "It's been a tough day, and my nerves are in shreds. I need to get home and have a long, hot bath and then a martini." Thursday5 thought for a moment. "After you've drunk the long, hot bath," she observed, "you'll never have room for the martini.

It occurred to him that perhaps the Dark One had got a bum deal -- Demetrios would have made his own way to hell in the fullness of time, without an Allegro Equipe to take him there.

The Nursery Crime Division was not disbanded and is still active to this day.

Once we were on the high Plynlimon pass, we stopped to stretch our legs, change drivers, and make a short devotion to the shrine dedicated to the once-popular but now little-known Saint Aosbczkcs, the Patron Saint of Fading Relevance.

Some things are worth going to jail for, Victor," replied Bowden in an even tone. "As LiteraTecs we swore to uphold and defend the written word—not indulge a crazed politician's worst paranoic fantasies.

First you say you're fine, then you say you're not. We call it "Hamlet Syndrome"- and attempt to get your own way by feigning insanity, generally by saying what comes into your head and dithering a lot. Mind you,' he added thoughtfully, 'it works a lot better if you're a prince.

Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity lies Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.

Ralph started to scream in pain. Not that 'stubbed your toe' sort of pain, but more a kind of 'detached kneecap' kind of pain, only with seven simultaneous childbirths, neuralgia, and a tooth abscess all mixed in as well, for good luck. The sort you hope you never get to experience.

Do you think that horrible servant girl will get my body pregnant?' she asked as we trotted down the steps. 'I've heard about you girl orphans having no morals and having babies for fun and selling them to buy bicycles and fashion accessories and onions and stuff.

Before, I suspected I might not amount to anything, and now I now I won't, so at least it takes away the wearisome burden of delusive hope

Magic is the fifth fundamental force and is even more mysterious than gravity, which is really saying something.

First you say you're fine, then you say you're not. We call it "Hamlet Syndrome"- an attempt to get your own way by feigning insanity, generally by saying what comes into your head and dithering a lot. Mind you,' he added thoughtfully, 'it works a lot better if you're a prince.

Emperor Zhark may have been the embodiment of terror across innumerable star systems, but he lived with his mum- and if the rumours were correct, she still insisted on bathing him.

Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.

The language of division can always be monetised.

Calming, soothing and almost without peer. The second, naturally, is a hot soaking bath. The third is Puccini. In the bath with a hot cup of tea and Puccini. Heaven.

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.

There was no more celebrated partnership in Jurisfiction either then or now—it was Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark. The hedgehog from Beatrix Potter and the emperor from the Zhark series of bad science-fiction novels.

Hi, Emperor. How's the galactic-domination business these days?" "Hard work," he replied, rolling his eyes heavenward. "Honestly, I invade peaceful civilizations on a whim, destroy their cities and generally cause a great deal of unhappy mayhem—and then they turn against me for absolutely no reason at all.

Even I was not immune to the passion of the battle. When I first went to the peninsula I was excited by the war—I could feel the insidious hand of nationalism holding me upright and smothering my reason.

Of course. We've been monitoring these cucumbers very closely and move in as soon as they start to approach the magic fifty-kilo mark to take samples, then observe the blast. McGuffin's work at QuangTech was never about turning grass cuttings into crude; it was always cucumbers." He smiled. "Cucumbers that can extract the deuterium and tritium from the groundwater, store it all up and then self-ignite. Finally cucumbers have a reason for being.

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

I took a sip of my drink. It tasted like old horse blankets soaked in urine.

Aber als ich mich beruhigt hatte, ist mir klar geworden, dass diese Welt, so verdorben und unvollkommen sie ist, schöner wäre, wenn du in ihr bliebest.<