Jasper Fforde

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.

Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.

Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.

I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!

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.

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

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.

Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.

Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.

Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.

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.

Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.