Quotes from book

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 book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

“I have the death sentence in seven genres.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: 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 book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

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

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: 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 book The Well of Lost Plots

Source: The Well of Lost Plots

“Miss Havisham had told me about Generics. They were created here in the Well to populate the books that were to be written. At the point of creation they were simply a human canvas without paint - blank like a coin, ready to be stamped with individualism. They had no history, no conflicts, no foibles - nothing that might make them either readable or interesting in any way. It was up to various institutions to teach them to be useful members of fiction. They were graded, too. A to D, one through ten. Any that were D-graded were like worker bees in crowds and busy streets. Small speaking parts were C-grades; B-grades usually made up the bulk of featured but not leading characters. These parts usually -but not always- went to the A-grades, handpicked for their skills at character projection and multidimensionality.”

Jasper Fforde book The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots (2003), ch.1, p. 11