Quotes from Lost in a Good Book

Jasper Fforde ·  399 pages

Rating: (43.8K votes)


“Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I'll tell you what love is" I said, "It is blind devotion, unquestioning self humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your heart and soul to the smiter.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“You'll like it here; everyone is quite mad.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book



“…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?
What do you mean, odd?'
Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark."

"A whale isn't a fish, Thursday."

"A whale shark is--sort of."

"All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish."

"A crayfish isn't a fish."

"A starfish, then."

"Still not a fish."

"This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“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.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I was on HPD--Heathcliff Protection Duty--in Wuthering Heights for two years, and believe me, the ProCaths tried everything. I personally saved him from assassination eight times.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“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.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book



“What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“I don’t know—avant verrais?”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“You nearly killed eight people!" I managed to gasp out loud.
"My count was closer to twelve," returned Havisham as she opened the door. "And anyhow, you can't nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“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, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“My temper began to rise -- always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book



“It wasn’t going to be hard…it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I'd done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“The universe always moves from an ordered state to a disordered one; that a glass may fall to the ground and shatter yet you never see a broken glass reassemble itself and then jump back on the table.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable form of narcissus.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book



“The course of true love rarely runs smooth.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“So you're going to have to ask yourselves on simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“My father said it was a delightfully odd - and dangerously self-destructive - quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia then in genuine news stories.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“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, quote from Lost in a Good Book



“Most of Mycroft's ideas were far too dangerous to even think about, much less let loose on a world unprepared for hyper-radical thought.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“Mr McGregor’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? Quite the Darth Vader of children’s literature.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“He said you were very dangerous."
"No more dangerous than anyone else who dares to speak the truth.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


“Are you married?
Yes, I mumbled, that is to say - no.
Come, come, said Havisham angrily. It is a simple enough question.
I was married, I answered.
Died?
No, I mumbled, that is to say - yes.
I'll try harder questions in future, announced Havisham, for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from Lost in a Good Book


About the author

Jasper Fforde
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Farthest Shore


“They drain you sometimes. They really do.

"What's it all about then mate? What's the secret of life? You should know. You're a fucking cab driver."

Yeah, right. (As if I'll learn the secret of life talking to arseholes like you all night).

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The life of a cab driver. Glimpses into other people's lives.”
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“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.”
― Plato, quote from The Symposium


“Esther, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you when you go. I don’t know how I can get along. What am I going to do?” And then I just expected her like always to say, “Well, Dad, let me tell you; here’s what you do, A B C.” But she said, “Come here.” She just hugged me; held me close, didn’t say anything, didn’t say anything. And I realize now that that was . . . that’s the best way to love someone. Hold them close, know that you’re loved, let it wash over you. We got to love her and she got to love us. Amen?”
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“That's the curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Secret Adversary


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