“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.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of
antiquarian books.
'Impressive, eh?'
'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass
all these?'
'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows
books and never gives them back?'
'Yes...?'
'I'm that person.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Humpty had always sat on walls, it was his way.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“You speak baby gibberish?' asked Jack.
'Fluently. The adult-education center ran a course, and I have a lot of time on my hands.'
'So what did he say?'
'I don't know.'
'I thought you said you spoke gibberish?'
'I do. But your baby doesn't. I think he's speaking either
pre-toddler nonsense, a form of infact burble or an obscure dialect of
gobbledygook. In any event, I can't understand a word he's saying.'
'Oh.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“I collect ex-boyfriends -- and more than five, at last count.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“I loved him, officer. More than any woman ever loved an egg.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“She opened the door within two seconds of his pressing the doorbell, letting out a stream of cats that ran around with such rapidity and randomness of motion that they assumed a liquid state of furry purringness. The exact quantity could have been as low as three or as high as one hundred eight; no one could ever tell as they were all so dangerously hyperactive.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Think of this: 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 Gogh, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong. The civilization that devises the infrastructure to allow these wonderful things to be created is essentially a product of war—death and suffering—and commerce—deceit and inequality. Even your liberty to discuss the shortcomings of your own species has its foundations in blood and hardship.” “That’s a depressing thought,”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllabic’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“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, quote from The Big Over Easy
“If you drive at precisely twenty-nine miles per hour, the rumble strips play ‘Jerusalem’ on the car tires. Listen.” Mary slowed to the correct speed and”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“ALBINOS DEMAND ACTION ON MOVIE SLUR The albino community demanded action yesterday to stop their unfair depiction as yet another movie featured an albino as a deranged hitman. “We’ve had enough,” said Mr. Silas yesterday at a small rally of albinos at London’s Pinewood Studios. “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, quote from The Big Over Easy
“This must have been how it all began with Chymes,” sighed Jack. “A small
omission on one case, an ‘embellishment’ on the next. The question is not about
what’s best but what’s right. Chymes had confused the two and compromised not
only his own integrity but that of the police—and the due process of law.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“She opened the door within two seconds of his pressing the doorbell, letting out a stream of cats that ran around with such rapidity and randomness of motion that they assumed a liquid state of furry purringness.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“She looked around at the close confines of the NCD offices. They were cramped and untidy. No. They were worse than that. They had gone through cramped and untidy, paused briefly at small and shabby before ending up at pokey and damp.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“He's not as bad as everyone makes out. He might buy venerable old companies and strip their assets, causing numerous layoffs and the odd corporate suicide or two, but that's business. Inside, he's a big teddy bear.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Mary?" said an officer who was carrying a large potted plant in the manner of someone who thinks it is well outside his job description.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“So you could value your own life," replied the Titan. "Before that you were under the gods' thumbs, doing their bidding without caring if you lived or died. When you could see that life was worth living by your fear of the unknown that was death, then you could really make things happen.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“It’s about good copy and ensuring that cases can be made into top-notch documentaries on the telly. Public approval is the all-important currency these days, and police budgets ebb and flow on the back of circulation and viewing figures.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Father liked word games. He was fourteen times world Scrabble champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“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, quote from The Big Over Easy
“They turned their attention to the wardrobe that held several Armani suits, all of them individually tailored to fit Humpty’s unique stature and held up on hangers shaped like hula hoops.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Big Over Easy
“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, quote from The Big Over Easy
“Well, I know better what I don’t want. I don’t want somebody who’s always nagging me to be something I’m not. And I don’t want somebody who thinks she knows what’s best for me and who maneuvers around trying to get me to do things her way.”
Kate frowned. “Nobody wants anyone like that. It’s like saying, ‘I don’t want someone who’ll poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.’ Forget what you don’t want. What do you want?”
― Jennifer Crusie, quote from Manhunting
“I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before than, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar marks the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters
“Back in civilization I begin the questioning,” wrote Randy. “What to do with life? What kind of life? In wilderness this ceases; the questions aren’t answered, they dissolve.” BEFORE”
― Eric Blehm, quote from The Last Season
“A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman.
The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names--Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from Lavinia
“He slapped one hand against the breech of the Thompson, slapped again, pulsing frustration, and said aloud, “Dammit!”
― Jeff Shaara, quote from The Steel Wave
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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