Jasper Fforde Quotes

"How is the faith-unification business?"
"We've nearly got everyone," said Joffy with a smile. "The atheists came on board last week. Once we had suggested that 'god' could be a set of essentially beneficent physical rules of the cosmos, they were only too happy to join. In fact, apart from a few scattered remnants of faith leaders who can't quite come to terms with the loss of their power, influence and associated funny hats, it's all looking pretty good."

“I am surprised to see you because…you died six years ago!”
“I did?” inquired Mycroft with genuine concern. “Why does no one tell me these things?”
I shrugged, as there was really no good answer to this.

"I lost sixty soldiers under my command."
"Your fault?" I asked.
"No, but they were all my responsibility, so it amounts to the same thing."

If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free.

Mr. McGregor’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? Quite the Darth Vader of children’s literature.

Whatever. As far as I can see, there is one state of dead and that’s ‘not living.’ Now, do you have anything useful to add to this investigation or not?”

"The ChronoGuard has shut itself down, and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically and theoretically…impossible."
"Good thing, too," replied Landen. "It always made my head ache. In fact I was thinking of doing a self-help book for SF novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't."

"Bipedal movement is the skill of controlled falling," said Square. "If it weren't so commonplace, it would seem miraculous—like much out here, to be truthful."

"Do you know what the worst bit about dying is?"
"Tell me, Gran."
"You never get to see how it all turns out."

No, I don’t want to seem underhand or insulting but Toccata’s a poisonous, untrustworthy, self-serving little reptile – with a severe personality disorder and a disquieting capacity for cannibalism.

"He said you were very dangerous."
"No more dangerous than anyone else who dares to speak the truth."

"I'll be honest," I said, "I have nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it's a dangerous nonsense."

"Do I have to talk to insane people?"
"You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory."

The first four in the series had been less a lighthearted chronicling of my adventures and more of a “Dirty Harry meets Fanny Hill,” but with a good deal more sex and violence.

Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.