Jasper Fforde

“It’s easy. A lobotomized monkey could do it.”

“And where are we going to find a lobotomized monkey at this time of night?”

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hardwired at inception.

My father told me that for the most part coincidences could be safely ignored: they were merely that chance discovery of one pertinent fact from a million or so possible daily interconnections. “Stop a stranger in the street,” he would say, “and delve into each other’s past. Pretty soon an astounding-too-amazing-to-be-chance coincidence will appear.”

“Don’t believe this,” murmured Miss Havisham. “It’s all poppycock. Her majesty is a verb short of a sentence.”

“I’ll tell you what love is,” I told her. “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!”