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.

- Jasper Fforde

When you're an author, you're always two people. Jasper the writer is different from Jasper the person at home.

- Jasper Fforde

When I was about 10 or 11, I realised that people made movies; until then, I had thought they just happened.

- Jasper Fforde

Speak to any editor and ask them what they turned down, and they'll have long lists of books.

- Jasper Fforde

So my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.

- Jasper Fforde

Perhaps fantasy offers imaginative escapism more than other genres.

- Jasper Fforde

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.

- Jasper Fforde

I hope that in my books there's an undertone of politics, basic tenets of how we should live.

- Jasper Fforde

I have a very varied taste in music. Everything from rap to classical to Latino to Rat Pack to jazz.

- Jasper Fforde

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

- Jasper Fforde

Every book should have a romance.

- Jasper Fforde

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.

- Jasper Fforde

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.

- Jasper Fforde

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.

- Jasper Fforde

There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.

- Jasper Fforde

There is a certain degree of 'steampunkishness' that creeps into my books.

- Jasper Fforde

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

- Jasper Fforde

It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.

- Jasper Fforde

If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.

- Jasper Fforde

I'm not of the opinion that the next logical step for a book is for it to be made into a film.

- Jasper Fforde