Joanne Harris Quotes

Old habits never die. And when you've once been in the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you

Most adults assume that the feelings of adolescence don't count, somehow, and that those searing passions of rage and hate and embarrassment and horror and hopeless, abject love are something your grow out of, something hormonal, a practice run for the Real Thing. It wasn't. At 13 *everything* counts; there are sharp edges on everything, and all of them cut.

One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.

All those moments, those memories. Everything that we are, compressed in just two or three kilos of paper - the weight of a human heart.

I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you've been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things ... Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.

I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.

And so Nat stood up and joined the group, and followed, and watched, and awaited his chance as the light of Chaos lit the plain and gods and demons marched to war.

A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online.

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

Loki, that's me. Loki, the Light-Bringer, the misunderstood, the elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies.

I'm not fond of cities: the constant activity and swarms of people.

Fiction is a tower of glass built from a million tiny truths, grains of sand fused together to make a single, gleaming lie.

If knowledge was power I had under my possession the entire school

I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.

We made close to forty boxes today. Fifteen truffles (still selling well), but also a batch of coconut squares, some sour cherry gobstoppers, some bitter-coated orange peel, some violet creams, and a hundred or so lunes de miel, those little discs of chocolate made to look like the waxing moon, with her profile etched in white against the dark face.
It's such a delight to choose a box, to linger over the shape- will it be heart shaped, round, or square? To select the chocolates with care; to see them nestled between the folds of crunchy mulberry-colored paper; to smell the mingled perfumes of cream, caramel, vanilla, and dark rum; to choose a ribbon; to pick out a wrapping; to add flowers or paper hearts; to hear the silky whisssh of rice paper against the lid-

But I rather thought
I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair."
"I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

Guilleaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the corner of avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.

A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all.

No one looks at us. We might as well be invisible; or clothing marks us as strangers, transients. They are polite, so polite; no one stares at us.

Better a king in the gutter,' he said, 'than a slave in an emperor's place

Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.

I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder if this is temptation. If so, I am stone.

For me, the magic of Hawaii comes from the stillness, the sea, the stars.

What is it that the slave dreams? The slave dreams of being the master.

Don't worry so much about 'not supposed to'.

Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch?

The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.

The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go, most people aren't really all that much different.

When the going gets tough, choose your cliché.

For a moment something almost as rare as the sight that they had just witnessed occurred: Loki was totally lost for words.

We didn't see anyone that day. We had no expectations. Everything was spontaneous. There wasn't a single moment of stress. We laughed like crazy all afternoon – though I couldn't tell you what about. And there was definitely something in the air – call it magic if you like – because that was the happiest Christmas any of us could remember, which makes me think that perhaps, like luck, magic is something we can make for ourselves. It isn't something you can buy. It doesn't come as standard. And you don't need to plan, or to overspend, or to wrack your brains trying to come up with some extraordinary way to celebrate. Because sometimes it's the little things that bring us the greatest pleasure.

A named thing is a tamed thing.

Like a flower she grows towards the light, without thinking or examining the process which moves her to do so. I wish I could do the same.

I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm, of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist.

Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station.

Anything that can be dreamed is true.

There's also a lot of random stuff about poetry, flowers and lute music, plus kissing and cuddling (lots of this), wearing similar outfits, talking incessantly about the current object of devotion, and generally losing one's faculties.

The day stretched out in front of him like an empty road in the desert.

You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.

I sublimate different parts of my personality through my characters. Which is worrying, as some of them can be a bit nasty. I'm pleased the stuff on the page isn't inside me any more.

The serpent eating itself, tail-first. We live to repeat the same mistakes, to push away the ones we love, to move on when we want to stay, to wait in silence when we should speak. In the life we have chosen to lead, loss is the only constant. Loss, that eats up everything – like the snake, even itself.

Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.

Magic carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine. Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resur-rection and the Life at the turn of a card ... I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to.
And now? What do I believe right now?
'I believe that being happy is the only important thing,' I told him at last.
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the hear. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

I'm not sure I believe in the whole 'ghost-afterlife' thing, but I think places are marked by people who have been there.

Polite contempt. The barbed and poisonous weapon of the righteous.

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries
escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky
usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins

I was convinced I'd hate Twitter - but I've come to like it very much. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends and colleagues I wish I could see more often - I sometimes feel a little isolated living in Yorkshire, and it's nice to have the contact.

Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.

And yet, it was still a performance. Odin and I both knew it. It was a kind of play, a dream of how things might have been if he and I had been capable of trusting each other for a change. And so we hunted, and sang, and laughed, and told heavily edited stories of the good old days, while each of us watched the other and wondered when the knife would fall.

More. Oh that word. That deceptive word. That eater of lives; that malcontent.

There was a quote he could not quite remember, something about the past being an island surrounded by time. He had missed the last boat to the island.

A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.

Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It's my specialty.

I'm only keeping in touch with you for the sake of the children. Way to look after our son, by the way. I let you have him for the weekend and before I know it he's chained underground, awaiting Last Times and stinking of mead.

At such times I feel I could die for love of her, my little stranger, my heart swelling dangerously so that the only release is to run too, my red coat flapping around my shoulders like wings, my hair a comet's tail in the patchy blue sky.

I'm insatiably curious.

I've never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow.

Rock salt and bread by the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood on our pillow, to sweeten our dreams.

Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.

Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight.

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes

Thor looked at Maddy. "What d'you mean, Father?"
He had loosened his grip on Loki, who was now flattened against the cell wall as far from Jormungand as he could manage while Ellie, incensed at this latest invasion, lashed out at the serpent with her walking stick.
"Terrific," said Loki under his breath. "Come to Netherworld. Meet the kids.

Library-denigrators, pay heed: suggesting that the Internet is a viable substitute for libraries is like saying porn could replace your wife.

No one should be so precious as to refuse criticism of their work. But to respect an opinion, we have to know that it was given honestly and with proper thought.

The air is hot and rich with the scent of chocolate. Quite unlike the white powdery chocolate I knew as a boy, this has a throaty richness like the perfumed beans from the coffee stall on the market, a redolence of amaretto and tiramisù, a smoky, burned flavor that enters my mouth somehow and makes it water. There is a silver jug of the stuff on the counter, from which a vapor rises. I recall that I have not breakfasted this morning.

It's never too late to come home," he said, and pulled me gently, insistently toward him."All you have to do ... is stop moving away.

My mother have taught me that food is a universal passport. Whatever the constraints of language, culture or geography, food crosses over all boundaries. To offer food is to extend the hand of friendship; to accept is to be accepted into the most closed of communities. I

My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.

If I'm going to die today, the least I can do is look fabulous while I'm doing it.

The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, Will I? Won't I? in pitiful indecision.

All right, Monsieur Jay,' she said, smiling. 'I'll tell them you're OK.

And when you fall from that parapet,the sound you'll be hearing as you go down will be me,laughing my head off.

How can you fly with a stone around your neck? How can you run with a chain on your feet?
'But I love him,' I said.
That's the stone. That's the chain, said the hawthorn. And until you can give them back, you will never be free again.

It's too early for strawberries. But the clearing is filled with their leaves and their little white flowers, like fallen stars. The wishing well was covered, too, so that only someone who knew it was there would have really noticed it. It looks like a barrow under the green; somewhere fairies or goblins might live.

And while she read her cards and muttered to herself, I would leaf through my collection of cookery cards, incanting the names of never-tasted dishes like mantras, like the secret formulae of life. Boeuf en daube. Champignons farcis à la grèque. Escalopes à la Reine. Crème caramel. Schokoladentorte. Tiramisu. In the secret kitchen of my imagination I made them all, tested, tasted them, added to my collection of recipes wherever we went, pasted them into my scrapbook like photographs of old friends. They gave weight to my wanderings, the glossy clippings shining out from between the smeary pages like signposts along our erratic path.
I bring them out now like long-lost friends. Soupe de tomates à la gasconne, served with fresh basil and a slice of tartelette méridonale, made on biscuit-thin pâte brisée and lush with the flavors of olive oil and anchovy and the rich local tomatoes, garnished with olives and roasted slowly to produce a concentration of flavors that seems almost impossible.

I liked her better for showing a little spirit.

I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.

In return, Joe taught Jay more about the garden. Slowly the boy learned to tell lavender from rosemary from hyssop from sage. He learned to taste soil- a pinch between the finger and thumb slipped under the tongue, like a man testing fine tobacco- to determine its acidity. He learned how to calm a headache with crushed lavender, or a stomachache with peppermint. He learned to prepare skullcap tea and chamomile to aid sleep. He learned to plant marigolds in the potato patch to discourage parasites and to pick nettles from the top to make ale and to fork the sign against the evil eye if ever a magpie flew past.

What is a writer of fiction but a liar with a licence?

And Odin should have known from the first that perfect Order does not bend; it simply stands until it breaks, which is why it rarely survives for any meaningful length of time.

From a certain height, everyone looks the same - men, women, villains, kings - as if rank and fortune were simply an accident of perspective.

I first saw the island of Noirmoutier when I was two weeks old. I think it's probably safe to say that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time; but I grew to love it as year after year I spent holidays there at my grandparents' cottage.

Weeds and wheat cannot grow peacefully together. Any gardener could tell you the same thing.

Witches don't just quit,

All schools have their skeletons. St Oswald's is no exception. Most of the time, we try our best to keep them in the closet. But this time, the only recourse we have is to throw open all the closets, light as many bulbs as we can and catch the vermin as it comes out.

You see, I do believe in miracles. I, who have passed through fire. I do believe.

The process of giving is without limits.

Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, ... some lies can be true, ... broken faith may be restored.

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.

I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.

The wind always brings us back to the same wall

I tend to write about more than one generation because as a child I had contact with more than one generation; it was normal to be around older people.

The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.

Some areas of technology really don't interest me at all, but I welcome anything that makes life easier instead of harder.

I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.

Those people who say that words have no power know nothing of the nature of words. Words, well placed, can end a regime; can turn affection to hatred; can start a religion or even a war. Words are the shepherds of lies; they lead the best of us to the slaughter.

He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work.

Nat Parson says it's the devil's mark."
"Nat Parson's a gobshite."
Maddy was torn between a natural feeling of sacrilege and a deep admiration of anyone who dared call a parson 'gobshite.

There's an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don't help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don't help, tell better lies.

Remember, it's the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings.