Frasi di Jasper Fforde

pagina 3

“«Questo lo so» esclamò Landen «e ne sono del tutto d'accordo. Mi piacerebbe tanto capire perché ti sei tirata indietro. Dai la caccia a super criminali, all'OPS affronti rischi enormi, disubbidisci agli ordini per recuperare i tuoi compagni feriti sotto un intenso fuoco di artiglieria, eppure…»
«Ho capito. Non saprei. Probabilmente le decisioni su questioni di vita o di morte sono più facili da prendere perché sono radicali, bianco o nero. Le affronto meglio perché è più facile. Le emozioni umane, be'… sono un'infinita gradazione di grigi e io non mi trovo bene con le mezze tinte».”

“« -… sono andato nella Londra del 1610 e ho scoperto che Shakespeare era solo un attore con un secondo lavoro potenzialmente imbarazzante come ricettatore a Stratford. Nulla di strano che lo tenesse nascosto - lo farebbe chiunque.

-Chi li ha scritti allora? Bacon? Marlowe?

-No, è insorto un problemino. Vedi, nessuno ha mai sentito parlare di quelle opere, figuriamoci averle scritte.

Non capivo.

-Cosa vuoi dire? Non ci sono?

-Proprio così. Non esistono. Non sono mai state scritte. Né da lui, né da altri.

-Scusate- si intromise Landen, che ne aveva abbastanza -ma abbiamo visto il Riccardo III sei settimane fa.
-Certo- disse mio padre -Il tempo è scardinato alla grande. Naturalmente bisognava intervenire. Ho portato con me una copia delle opere complete e le ho date all'attore Shakespeare nel 1592 perché le distribuisse secondo uno schema preciso. Questo soddisfa la tua domanda? »”

“Visualizza qualcosa: un albatros, per esempio.
– Fatto.
– Okay, ora cancellalo.
– Fatto.
– Adesso cancella un altro albatros.
– Come faccio? Non ce ne sono più!
– Okay. Immagina allora che io ti abbia prestato un albatros per colmare il tuo deficit di uccelli marini. Quanti albatros hai, adesso?
– Nessuno.
– Benissimo. Adesso rilassati, e io mi riprendo il mio albatros.”

“…Negligible Senescence…”

“We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.”

“That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd.”

“Defiance through compliance.”

“What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“I don’t know—avant verrais?”

“I got Oedipus off the incest charge--technicality, of course--he didn't know it was his mother at the time.”

“He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.”

“Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.”

“Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.”

“… the landscape inside Lord of the Rings was so stunning and so stupendous that it could be absorbed as a form of nourishment.”

“There are a lot of idiots in this country, and they deserve representation as much as the next man.”

“If it's a chimera alert, we just follows the screams.”

“The neanderthal experiment was simultaneously the high and low point of the genetic revolution. Successful in that a long-dead cousin of Homo sapien was brought back from extinction, yet a failure in that the scientists, so happy to gaze upon their experiments from their ever lofty ivory towers, had not seen so far as to consider the social implications that a new species of man might command in a world unvisited by their like for over 30 millennia. It was little surprise that so many neanderthals felt confused and unprepared for the pressures of modern life. It was Homo sapien at his least sapient.”

“Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question.”

“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.”