From One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde:
I thought for a moment. Of the untidy chaos I had seen in the RealWorld; of not knowing what was going to happen; of not knowing what, if anything, had relevance. The RealWorld was a sprawling mess of a book, in need of a good editor. I thought then of the narrative order here in the BookWorld, our resolved plot lines and the observance of natural justice we took for granted.
‘Literature is claimed to be a Mirror of the World,’ I said, ‘but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld hope their own world to be – it isn’t a mirror, it’s an aspiration.’
‘Humans,’ said Sprockett, ‘are the most gloriously bizarre creatures.’
‘Yes,’ I said with a smile, ‘they certainly are.’
One of my overdue judgements was released last Friday and collected and delivered to me in the course of this morning. I sat in my desk restlessly, paced around the office, and generally loitered suspiciously around until I received it in my hands and read it all the way through.
In the afternoon, I went to Court to attend one matter, then sat in the bar room, had a cup of tea, and read the last 3 chapters of my book to escape.
There’s nothing else left to do. Tomorrow is another day.
