The Well of Lost Plots Quotes

“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“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.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren’t you working on this?’

Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. ‘Indeed. The uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the imaginotransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s mostly an unlicensed-usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim’s Progress may also be a problem due to its had had/that that ratio.’

‘So what’s the problem in Progress?’

‘That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked, but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.’

‘Hmm,’ said the Bellman, ‘I thought had had had had TGC’s approval for use in Dickens? What’s the problem?’

‘Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,’ said Lady Cavendish. ‘You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.’

‘So the problem with that other that that was that…?’

‘That that other-other that that had had approval.’

‘Okay’ said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, ‘let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim’s Progress, had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC’s approval?’

There was a very long pause. ‘Right,’ said the Bellman with a sigh, ‘that’s it for the moment. I’ll be giving out assignments in ten minutes. Session’s over – and let’s be careful out there.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Fiction wouldn't be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“I have the death sentence in seven genres.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“I got Oedipus off the incest charge--technicality, of course--he didn't know it was his mother at the time. ”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“To avoid a repeat of this near disaster, the Council of Genres took the only course of action open to them to ensure TGC would be too inefficient and unimaginative to pose a threat. They appointed a committee to run it.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“I kicked off my shoes and flopped on the sofa next to Gran, who had fallen asleep over a sock she was knitting. It was already a good twelve feet long because, she said, she had “yet to build up enough courage to turn the heel.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses—you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, where no one noticed?”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clichés you could have cut it with a knife.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“«Silenzio in aula!» strillò il Coniglio Bianco con voce stridula.
«Mozzatele il capo!» strillò la Regina.
Il Re inforcò gli occhiali e si guardò intorno inquieto, per scoprire chi aveva parlato. La Regina gli diede di gomito e fece un cenno nella mia direzione.
«Tu, laggiù!» disse il Re. «Dovrai parlare molto presto, miss, miss...»
«Next» interloquì Coniglio Bianco dopo aver consultato la sua pergamena.
«Come?» replicò il Re un po' confuso. «Abbiamo già finito?»
«No, Vostra Maestà» rispose paziente il Coniglio Bianco «il suo nome è Next. Thursday Next».
«E magari pensi di essere spiritosa?»”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Remember that craze a few years back in the BookWorld for sending chain letters? Receive a letter and send one on to ten friends? Well, someone has been overenthusiastic with the letter U—I’ve got a report here from the Text Sea Environmental Protection Agency saying that reserves of the letter U have reached dangerously low levels—we need to decrease consumption until stocks are brought back up. Any suggestions?” “How about using a lower-case n upside down?” said Benedict. “We tried that with M and W during the great M Migration of ’62; it never worked.” “How about respelling what, what?” suggested King Pellinore, stroking his large white mustache. “Any word with the our ending could be spelt or, don’tchaknow.” “Like neighbor instead of neighbour?” “It’s a good idea,” put in Snell. “Labor, valor, flavor, harbor—there must be hundreds. If we confine it to one geographical area, we can claim it as a local spelling idiosyncrasy.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“First there was OralTrad, upgraded ten thousand years later by the rhyming (for easier recall) Oral TradPlus. For thousands of years this was the only Story Operating System and it is still in use today. The system branched in two about twenty thousand years ago; on one side with CaveDaubPro (forerunner of PaintPlus V2.3, GrecianUrn V1.2, Sculpt-Marble V1.4 and the latest, all-encompassing SuperArtisticExpression-5). The other strand, the Picto-Phonetic Storytelling Systems, started with Clay Tablet V2.1 and went through several competing systems (Wax-Tablet, Papyrus, VellumPlus) before merging into the award-winning SCROLL, which was upgraded eight times to V3.5 before being swept aside by the all new and clearly superior BOOK V1. Stable, easy to store and transport, compact and with a workable index, BOOK has led the way for nearly eighteen hundred years. WORDMASTER XAVIER LIBRIS,
Story Operating Systems—the Early Years”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Do you know what happened when they tried to upgrade SCROLL?” said Bradshaw. “The system conflict wiped out the entire library at Alexandria—they had to torch the lot to stop it spreading.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.” I”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer—perhaps more.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,” I observed, looking around. “Ah, yes,” replied Perkins, crossing a stone-arched bridge that spanned the small stream, “we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down—if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be rabbit within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Bradshaw, Bradshaw,” sighed Miss Havisham, shaking her head sadly. “If he flogs one more inciting incident from Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser, it will have so many holes we could use it as a colander.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example," explained Lady Cavendish. "You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“There were no characters or events written in, which was a shame—considering the work he did on the world itself, this might have been a bestseller.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“A Uncorn isn't for page twenty-seven, it's for eternity.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“The leader was identified by his dental records—why he had them on him, no one was quite sure.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“I’m not ready for this!” I hissed. “I’m probably going to fall flat on my face!” “ Probably has nothing to do with it; you shall. Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“ImaginoTransferenceRecordingDevice: A machine used to write books in the Well, the ITRD resembles a large horn (typically eight feet across and made of brass) attached to a polished mahogany mixing board a little like a church organ but with many more stops and levers. As the story is enacted in front of the collecting horn, the actions, dialogue, humor, pathos, etc., are collected, mixed and transmitted as raw data to Text Grand Central, where the wordsmiths hammer it into readable storycode. Once done, it is beamed direct to the author’s pen or typewriter, and from there through a live footnoterphone link back to the Well as plain text. The page is read, and if all is well, it is added to the manuscript and the characters move on. The beauty of the system is that authors never suspect a thing—they think they do all the work. COMMANDER TRAFFORD BRADSHAW, CBE
Bradshaw’s Guide to the BookWorld”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,” replied Snell as we walked along. “The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer’s imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader’s mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer—perhaps more.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots