"How is the book going?" I asked returning to my knitting. "The self-help stuff?" "The magnum opus." Landen looked thoughtful for a moment and then s… - Jasper Fforde

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "it is my considered opinion that most coincidences are simply quirks of chance—if you extrapolate the bell curve of probability you will find statistical abnormalities that seem unusual but are, in actual fact, quite likely, given the amount of people on the planet and the amount of different things we do in our lives."

"'Tis very strange!" he murmured, staring at the sun, trees, houses and traffic in turn. "It would take a rhapsody of wild and whirling words to do justice of all that I witness!"
"You're going to have to speak English out here."
"All this," explained Hamlet, waving his hands at the fairly innocuous Swindon street, "would take millions of words to describe correctly!"
"You're right. It would. That's the magic of the book imagino-transference technology," I told him. "A few dozen words conjure up an entire picture. But in all honesty the reader does most of the work."
"The reader? What's it got to do with him?"
"Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to each of those who read it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they've met, read or seen before—far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader."

"The stupidity surplus," repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, "I'm all for responsible government, but storing it up like this is bound to cause problems sooner or later—even by acting sensibly, the government has shown itself to be a bunch of idiots."
"There are a lot of idiots in this country," I replied absently, "and they deserve representation as much as the next man."