Jasper Fforde

My father always argued that time was far and away the most valuable commodity we had and that temporal profligacy should be a criminal offense—which kind of makes watching Celebrity Kidney Swap or reading Daphne Farquitt novels a crime straightaway.

“How is the book going?” I asked returning to my knitting.

“The self-help stuff?”

“The magnum opus.”

Landen looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “More opus than magnum. I’m trying to figure out whether the lack of progress is writer’s block, procrastination, idleness or just plain incompetence.”

I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and liberation of vast quantities of energy.

“Humans are molded by evolution to be short-termists, Miss Next,” he continued. His voice rumbled deeply and seemed to echo inside my head. “We need only to see our children to reproductive age to be successful in a biological sense. We have to move beyond that. If we see ourselves as residents on this planet for the long term, we need to plan for the long term.”

The first four in the series had been less a lighthearted chronicling of my adventures and more of a “Dirty Harry meets Fanny Hill,” but with a good deal more sex and violence.

The leader was identified by his dental records—why he had them on him, no one was quite sure.

“Look here, St. Zvlkx,” said Volescamper as they walked towards the marquee for tea and scones, “what was the thirteenth century like?”

“The Mayor wants to know what the thirteenth century was like—and no lip, sunshine.”

“Filthy, damp, disease-ridden and pestilential.”

“He said it was like London, Your Grace.”

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

How about this for a title: Men Are from Earth, Women Are from Earth—Just Deal with It.

I’d come to realize over the years that anything created by mankind had error, mischief and bureaucratic officialdom hardwired at inception, and the fictional world was no different.

The dangerously high level of the stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in the The Owl that Morning. The reason for the crisis was clear: Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste and his ruling Commonsense Party had been discharging their duties with a reckless degree of responsibility that bordered on inspired sagacity. Instead of drifting from one crisis to the next and appeasing the nation with a steady stream of knee-jerk legislation and headline-grabbing but arguably pointless initiatives, they had been resolutely building a raft of considered long-term plans that concentrated on unity, fairness and tolerance. It was a state of affairs deplored by Mr. Alfredo Traficcone, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, who wanted to lead the nation back onto the safer grounds of uninformed stupidity.

You’ll excuse me if I’m not convinced by your supposed altruism.