Joanne Harris Quotes & Sayings

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

Set a church clock wrong to fool the devil, my mother always told me. But in this case I suspect the devil is not fooled.

Not for a minute. — Joanne Harris

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

No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing. — Joanne Harris

Love not often, but forever. — Joanne Harris

The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

You seem to know a lot about it," she said. "And you do subtleties."
"Yeah. Like I've always wanted to destroy the Nine Worlds while committing suicide."
"Well, there's no need to be rude," protested Sif. — Joanne Harris

Too much balast slows you down. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

There was something about total loyalty, uncritical devotion, endless patience, perpetual forgiveness and the general inability to believe that a loved one could ever do anything wrong that, frankly, just gave him the creeps. — Joanne Harris

I think everybody has a secret life. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

I'd rather be a freak than a clone. — Joanne Harris

That's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes ...
After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith, start a war, change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster, topple walls, scale mountains
Hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart. — Joanne Harris

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

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

Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. — Joanne Harris

I find littering very annoying. It's a minor but also a major thing: a society that litters is one that also has so little respect for the environment and, consequently, other people. If we had clean streets, a lot of other things would be fixed almost effortlessly. — Joanne Harris

A demon, if you prefer the term; although to be honest, the difference between god and a demon is really only a matter of perspective. — Joanne Harris

Love not often, but forever. It's one of my mother's sayings, and all my life it has been the story of my heart ... Love for my mother; love for my friends; the dark and complex love of a woman for a man. But when Fleur was born, everything changed. A man who has never seen it may think he understands the ocean; but he thinks only of what he knows ... The reality, however, is beyond imagining: the scents, the sounds, the anguish, and the joy of it beyond any comparison with previous experience. That was Fleur. For the first instant, ... I knew that the world had changed. I had been alone and had never know it; had traveled, fought, suffered, danced, fornicated, loved, hated, grieved, and triumphed all alone, living like an animal from day to day, caring for nothing; desiring nothing; fearing nothing. Suddenly now everything was different ... I was a mother. — Joanne Harris

As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews. — Joanne Harris

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

Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality. — Joanne Harris

Garden work clears the mind. — Joanne Harris

Places have their own characters ... But the people begin to look the same. — Joanne Harris

Drunkeness, she told us in a rare moment of confidence, is a sin against the fruit, the tree, the wine itself. Wine, distilled and nurtured from bud into fruit; it deserves reverance. Joy. Gentleness.
(Page 194.) — Joanne Harris

Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul. — Joanne Harris

If you were to be stranded on a desert island, what three items would you take? I gave this frivolous answer: A cat, a hat and a piece of string. — Joanne Harris

Seven o'clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the End of the World, and goblins had been at the cellar again. — Joanne Harris

A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme,
Ou va-ti mistigri?
Passe sans faire de mai ici. — Joanne Harris

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

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

The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign. — Joanne Harris

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

I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop. — Joanne Harris

Online communities are an expression of loneliness. — Joanne Harris

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

Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there. — Joanne Harris

The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it. — Joanne Harris

I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

Anything that can be dreamed is true. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always. — Joanne Harris

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 — Joanne Harris

I am fascinated by how people eat and what it reveals about them. — Joanne Harris

Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh! — Joanne Harris

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

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

A named thing is a tamed thing. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

At17, balanced on that precarious walkway between adolescence and adulthood, the world is a crazy obstacle course paved one day with broken glass, the next with apple blossom. — Joanne Harris

I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines — Joanne Harris

I envy the table its scars, the scorch marks caused by the hot bread tins. I envy its calm sense of time, and I wish I could say: I did this five years ago. I made this mark, this ring caused by a wet coffee cup, this cigarette burn, this ladder of cuts against the wood's coarse grain. This is where Anouk carved her initials, the year she was six years old, this secret place behind the table leg. I did this on a warm day seven summers ago with the carving knife. Do you remember? Do you remember the summer the river ran dry? Do you remember? I envy the table's calm sense of place. It has been here a long time. It belongs. — Joanne Harris

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

I'm sorry. You went too far.'
Lovely. What an epitaph. — Joanne Harris

I've never viewed you as an enemy, more an adversary ... — Joanne Harris

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

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

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. — Joanne Harris

The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy ... The magic of everyday things. — Joanne Harris

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

I don't believe God really cares what you eat, or what you wear, or whom you love. I think that if God made the stars, He must have a greater perspective. — Joanne Harris

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? — Joanne Harris

Gods? Don't let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshippers. You don't even have to have powers anymore. In my time I've seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods - you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves.
God is just a word. Like Fury. like demon, Just words people use for things they don't understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It's just as appropriate. — Joanne Harris

From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice. — Joanne Harris

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

I'm quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don't mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

There's good news and slightly less good news. — Joanne Harris

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

Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have. — Joanne Harris

And yes,I was fabulous. — Joanne Harris

Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

We do not simply get showered with Hollywood money because we happened to write a little story about wizards one day. It's not winning the lottery. It's a real job, which real people do, and they have the same real problems as other real people. — Joanne Harris

And yet I could still hear them. As if some part of their essence had evaporated into the air, become a part of this place, ingrained, like the scent of cigarettes and burning sugar, in the woodwork and plaster. Everything was buzzing with that vanished presence, buzzing and singing and laughing louder than ever before, stone and tile and polished wood, all whispering with agitation and excitement; never still, never silent. — Joanne Harris

I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon. — Joanne Harris

To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think ... This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact. — Joanne Harris

Please!" yelled Loki. "I am not being noble! — Joanne Harris

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 — Joanne Harris

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. — Joanne Harris

You may be a foreigner, but you have the heart of a Frenchman. — Joanne Harris

But if you could travel back through Time, and find yourself as you used to be, wouldn't you try, just once at least, to give her some kind of warning? Wouldn't you want to make things right? — Joanne Harris

Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow. — Joanne Harris

It may be something to do with my having been to a girls' school, but I'm far more comfortable making male friendships than female ones. My friends tend to be men and their significant others. — Joanne Harris

It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her. — Joanne Harris

I'm warning you now," said Freyja stiffly, "I have ... certain issues ... with Loki." (Maddy wondered briefly whether there was anyone in the Nine Worlds who didn't have issues with Loki.) — Joanne Harris

For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the changes. — Joanne Harris

There were a few compensations to having corporeal Aspect. Food (jam tarts were my favourites); drink (mostly wine and mead); setting things on fire; sex (although I was still extremely confused by all the taboos surrounding this - no animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons - frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had sex at all, with so many rules against it). — Joanne Harris

I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home. — Joanne Harris

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is — Joanne Harris

You priests. You're all the same. You think fasting helps you think about God, when anyone who can cook would tell you that fasting just makes you think about food. — Joanne Harris

I don't pretend to know much about love, but that's how great love comes to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret. — Joanne Harris