“I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.”
— Joanne Harris
“Knowledge is currency here….”
— Joanne Harris
“Don’t worry so much about ‘not supposed to’.”
— Joanne Harris
“The dead know everything, but don’t give a damn.”
— 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
“I happen to know that history is nothing but a spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.”
— Joanne Harris
“As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae’s sweet nature nor sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed Maddy was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn – or too slack – to change.Of course, folk agreed that it was not her fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but a smile costs nothing, as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice, then maybe she would have settled down.”
— Joanne Harris
“Old habits never die. And when you’ve once been in the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you”
— Joanne Harris
“I’d rather be a freak than a clone.”
— 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
“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
“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
“Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is”
— Joanne Harris
“I dreamt that I was old. And you – you were beside me.Forever young – in your hand, a cup of stars.”
— Joanne Harris
“If you can still write in spite of the fact that you’re not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you’re writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can’t stop doing it…then you’re a writer.”
— Joanne Harris
“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.”
— 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
“But stories are worlds. New worlds for us to visit. In stories, we live forever.”
— 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
“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
“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
“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
“Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.”
— Joanne Harris
“For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the changes.”
— 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
“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.”
— Joanne Harris
“A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the”
— Joanne Harris
“The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.”
— Joanne Harris
“People grieve in different ways, some silently, some in anger, some in spite. Rarely does grief bring out the best in people, despite what local historians like to tell you.”
— 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