Top 200 Jasper Fforde Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library. She pointed to the shelf opposite. Over there was Catch-22, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.”

— Jasper Fforde

152. “We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot.”

— Jasper Fforde

153. “All of everything came into existence simply because it wanted to be. The big bang wasn’t so much a big bang as a hasty dash toward an opportunity to trade nothingness for somethingness. The main contributory factor to the entire universe was a momentary effect in need of a cause.”

— Jasper Fforde

154. “Businessman, philanthropist, large egg.”

— Jasper Fforde

155. “Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable.”

— Jasper Fforde

156. “Somebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries.”

— Jasper Fforde

157. “I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long because, she said, she had “yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel.”

— Jasper Fforde

158. “Agents and publishers only want one thing – good writing.”

— Jasper Fforde

159. “She had met the man who was now her husband. He was seven foot three, and she was six foot two and a quarter. It was a match made perhaps not in heaven but certainly nearer the ceiling.”

— Jasper Fforde

160. “For a taste that’s a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it’s extinct.”

— Jasper Fforde

161. “Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn’t collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.”

— Jasper Fforde

162. “Stay close, do what I say and make as many mistakes as you want – just never the same one twice.”

— Jasper Fforde

163. “The real world is a book in bad need of an editor.”

— Jasper Fforde

164. “Just because of an unusual genetic abnormality, Hollywood thinks it can portray us as dysfunctional social pariahs. Ask yourself this: Have you ever been, or know anyone who has ever been, a victim of albino crime?” The protest follows hot on the heels of last week’s demonstrations when Colombians and men with ponytails complained of being unrelentingly portrayed as drug dealers. – Extract from The Mole, July 31, 2003.”

— Jasper Fforde

165. “Although helpful, a disembodied hand on the Bugatti’s steering wheel was a bit creepy, especially because this one was hairy and had No More Pies tattooed on the back.”

— Jasper Fforde

166. “I’ve never been averse to a little risk – after all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement.”

— Jasper Fforde

167. “Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.”

— Jasper Fforde

168. “Aspects that we consider normal today could very well be repugnant in the future – eating animals, for one thing, or abundant choice, or invasive surgery. I was simply trying to demonstrate that what is acceptable today may not be acceptable forever, and vice-versa.”

— Jasper Fforde

169. “Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.”

— Jasper Fforde

170. “Cats aren’t really friendly, they’re just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.”

— Jasper Fforde

171. “For myself, I favored the abstract. I collected not just obsolete terms and words, but ideas.”

— Jasper Fforde

172. “Besides, I punched him in the eye.”

— Jasper Fforde

173. “Death doesn’t care about personalities – he’s more interested in meeting quotas.”

— Jasper Fforde

174. “Everyone can do a bit,” I said, wondering where Kevin Zipp was. “If you’re thinking of somebody and the phone rings and it’s them, that’s magic. If you get a curious feeling that you’ve been or done something before, then that’s magic, too. It’s everywhere. It seeps into the fabric of the world and oozes out as coincidence, fate, chance, luck, or what have you. The big problem is having enough magic to make it work for you in some useful manner.”

— Jasper Fforde

175. “Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous.”

— Jasper Fforde

176. “I have the death sentence in seven genres.”

— Jasper Fforde

177. “These are the real puzzles that will face humanity. There is, he claims, a single theory that will explain not only why the queue you choose at a supermarket is always the slowest but why trains always leave on time when you are late and leave late when you are on time.” “There isn’t an answer to those,” murmured Madeleine doubtfully. “It just happens.” “That’s what they used to say about lightning,” replied Pandora, “and rainbows.”

— Jasper Fforde

178. “Never underestimate the capacity for romance, no matter what the circumstances.”

— Jasper Fforde

179. “All those words,′ she whispered, ’so diligently placed together, and so pointlessly torn apart.”

— Jasper Fforde

180. “Cucumbers are technically a fruit and in the same family as pumpkins, melons and squash, so it may benefit those markets, although, to be honest, giant melons don’t strike me as potentially that commercial.”

— Jasper Fforde

181. “In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.”

— Jasper Fforde

182. “Gregors’, ‘Greggs’ or ‘The Maccy-Gs’ are all rabbit slang for law enforcement agents, named after Mr McGregor, the villain in the Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit books. In the dubbed-into-Rabbity version of Star Wars, Darth Vader is literally translated as ‘Mr McGregor’.”

— Jasper Fforde

183. “Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed – you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?”

— Jasper Fforde

184. “DCI Horner’s advice to Jack Spratt: “Remember, m’boy,” his old boss had said, eyes twinkling, “that if anyone tries to get the better of you, stand up straight and say to yourself in an imperious air, ‘I am the new Mrs. de Winter now!’ You’ll find it works wonders.”

— Jasper Fforde

185. “Scientific thought – indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else – is just like the fashions that we wear – only much longer lived. It’s a little like a boy band.”

— Jasper Fforde

186. “But since anagram-related clues are now inadmissible as evidence, we sent the pork pie off for DNA analysis and managed to pinpoint the pie shop where it was purchased.”

— Jasper Fforde

187. “I wished I could share my own optimism.”

— Jasper Fforde

188. “I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer.”

— Jasper Fforde

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

— Jasper Fforde

190. “Do you know what happened when they tried to upgrade SCROLL?” said Bradshaw. “The system conflict wiped out the entire library at Alexandria – they had to torch the lot to stop it spreading.”

— Jasper Fforde

191. “I still feel threatened by academics, but my books have a lot of academic in-jokes and everybody assumes I went to university and studied English.”

— Jasper Fforde

192. “Inspector Turner’s hope to marry a wealthy Mr. Right and leave the service stayed just that – a hope – as so often Mr. Right turned out to be either Mr. Liar, Mr. Drunk or Mr. Already Married.”

— Jasper Fforde

193. “There was a picture of Don Hector on the wall and next to the television was a phonograph with a large collection of cylinders. I looked through them. They were a mixture of old favourites – Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, Ziggy Stardust – mixed with jazz and a little Puccini.”

— Jasper Fforde

194. “Literary detection and firearms don’t really go hand in hand; pen mighter than the sword and so forth.”

— Jasper Fforde

195. “To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that’s good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.”

— Jasper Fforde

196. “There’s more to good or bad than what’s written in the Rulebook.”

— Jasper Fforde

197. “The most favorite boy’s name is James; the least favorite is Gzxkls.”

— Jasper Fforde

198. “My temper began to rise – always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.”

— Jasper Fforde

199. “Joffy had decided many years before that the problem with religion wasn’t religion itself but its flagrant misuse as an absolutist argument to promote narrow tribal agendas.”

— Jasper Fforde

200. “Jack said nothing. It was time to start putting his plan into action. Then he remembered: He didn’t have one.”

— Jasper Fforde