Quotes from The Eyre Affair

“Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Literary detection and firearms don't really go hand in hand; pen mighter than the sword and so forth. ”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“What is there to forgive?. . .Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it's easier. Human emotions, well. . .they're just a fathomless collection of grays and I don't do so well on the midtones.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“The cleanest souls are the easiest to soil.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts – and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field – is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good –”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and
weary,
O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday
Next-
This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath
despising,
Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.
“Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of
text-
or I swear I’ll wring your neck!”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“I was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."
He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title.
"Didn't they split in '70?"
"Not always. How are things?”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton--go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday--I don't know why--and my father had no name at all--his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me...”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“The name is Schitt," he replied. "Jack Schitt.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Did the memory erasure device work, Uncle?"
"The what?"
"The memory erasure device. You were testing it when I last saw you."
"Don't know what you're talking about, dear girl.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“I don't believe in coincidences."
"Neither do I. That's a coincidence, isn't it?”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

“Words are like leaves,. . .like people really, fond of their own society.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from The Eyre Affair

About the author

Popular quotes

“whipped up a cloud of dirty”
― Vince Flynn, quote from American Assassin

“Found in a small stone cave bitten from the roadside, stitchless save for his great outsized boots and a plague of flies, fat on the human scrappage of dinners long past, Toad squatted in the slitted stomach of a warm child, eating loudly the face of her hapless, headless father, who sat a good foot off the ground impaled up the ass on a pointed post.”
― Nick Cave, quote from And the Ass Saw the Angel

“To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle’s shoulder.”
― Leonard Cohen, quote from Beautiful Losers

“Once upon a time there was a war...and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That's me.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Little One, to be with me is to hurt.”
“To be without you would hurt more.”
― Tiffany Reisz, quote from The Saint

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.