Quotes from Jasper Fforde

It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.

If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad.

If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.

There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.

When I was about 10 or 11, I realised that people made movies; until then, I had thought they just happened.

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

Death and the end of one's life are two very different things indeed.

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet says...it's payback time!

We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.

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

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.

Our notions of self-determination are, on the whole, something of a myth. We are governed almost exclusively by our own peculiar habits, which makes those who rail against them that much more remarkable.

Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day.

I'm not sure my books would translate into movies very easily. So rather than have someone do a terrible job, I haven't been willing to sell them.

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

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.

I am boring, but I'm ok with it. I'm the anchor, the shoulder...I'm an average man...with a truly extraordinary wife

the best lies to tell are the ones people want to believe

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

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

So my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.

When you're an author, you're always two people. Jasper the writer is different from Jasper the person at home.

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