Jasper Fforde
So my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.Collection: Humor
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.
I work very much on the principle that anything created by mankind has mischief and error hardwired into its inception.
Perhaps fantasy offers imaginative escapism more than other genres.
My mind wanders terribly. I'm not wholly annoyed by my daydreaming as it has been immense use to me as regards imaginative thought, but it doesn't help when it comes to concentration. And writing needs concentration - lots of it.
People who read my books have an open mind when it comes to new, bizarre, interesting and exciting ideas.
I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.
In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare.
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.
Class clowns become actors.
It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.
Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.
The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.
If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.
When I was about 10 or 11, I realised that people made movies; until then, I had thought they just happened.
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.
Speak to any editor and ask them what they turned down, and they'll have long lists of books.
When you're an author, you're always two people. Jasper the writer is different from Jasper the person at home.
I hope that in my books there's an undertone of politics, basic tenets of how we should live.
I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.
There is a certain degree of 'steampunkishness' that creeps into my books.
There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.
Every book should have a romance.
I'm not of the opinion that the next logical step for a book is for it to be made into a film.
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.
After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.Collection: Summer
Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.Collection: Book
If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.Collection: Life
Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.Collection: Time
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.Collection: Science
Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.Collection: Mistake
If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher.Collection: Real
Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.Collection: Cat
If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad.Collection: Simple
Quarkbeasts, for all their fearsome looks, are obedient to a fault. They are nine-tenths velociraptor and kitchen blender and one-tenth Labrador. It was the Labrador tenth that I valued most.Collection: Kitchen
Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.Collection: Ignorance
The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.Collection: Food
I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.Collection: Fighting
Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail.Collection: Love Is
Do you really think you'd win a PR war against a bunch of committed librarians?' He thought about this, but he knew I was right. The libraries were a treasured institution and so central to everyday life that government and commerce rarely did anything that might upset them.Some say they were more powerful than the military, or, if not, they were certainly quieter. As they say: Don't mess with librarians. Only they use a stronger word than 'mess'.Collection: Powerful
Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.Collection: World
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.Collection: Fall
Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.Collection: Essence
The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition.Collection: Life
the best lies to tell are the ones people want to believeCollection: Lying
Everything comes to an end. A good bottle of wine, a summer’s day, a long-running sitcom, one’s life, and eventually our species. The question for many of us is not that everything will come to an end but when. And can we do anything vaguely useful until it does?Collection: Summer
If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.Collection: Art
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.Collection: One Day
She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.Collection: Elderly
Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.Collection: Philosophy