Jasper Fforde Quotes
-
I hope that in my books there's an undertone of politics, basic tenets of how we should live.
-
How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?
-
Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hardwired at inception.
-
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.
-
Don't move," said Sprockett."Mimes don't generally attack unless they are threatened.
-
A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village." "Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?" "Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.
-
I work very much on the principle that anything created by mankind has mischief and error hardwired into its inception.
-
Whenever I'm giving talks, I always ask people to think of the most obscure questions because I enjoy those the most. I always get the same questions: Why does Pickwick say "plock" and will there be a movie? I like the really obscure questions because there's so much in the books. There are tons and tons of references and I like when people get the little ones and ask me about them. It's good for the audience [and also] they realize there's more there.
-
Without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted.
-
Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.
-
The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we regard as normal working procedure. The satirical point of the view may be to counterpoint that. The way we look at classics has been hijacked by the intelligentsia - Shakespeare is highbrow and seen as something clever people do, which isn't right at all. I basically pull inspiration from everywhere.
-
People who read my books have an open mind when it comes to new, bizarre, interesting and exciting ideas.
-
He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.
-
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.
-
Speak to any editor and ask them what they turned down, and they'll have long lists of books.
-
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.
-
Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.
-
[from the television show,"Evade the Question Time"]At the end of the first round, I will award three points to Mr. Kaine for an excellent nonspecific condemnation, plus one bonus point for blaming the previous government and another for successfully mutating the question to promote the party line. Mr. van de Poste gets a point for a firm rebuttal, but only two points for his condemnation, as he tried to inject an impartial and intelligent observation.
-
If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.
-
There are a lot of idiots in this country, and they deserve representation as much as the next man.
-
So my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.
-
Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or knowing.
-
If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad.
-
Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.