Joanne Harris Chocolat Quotes

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

Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.

I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.

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

Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.

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

I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.

The process of giving is without limits.

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.

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.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

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.

A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.

I liked her better for showing a little spirit.

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

I carried recipes in my head like maps.

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

The wind always brings us back to the same wall

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

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.

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

Why can no one here think of anything but chocolates?

For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the changes.

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.

We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.

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

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.

he is the kind of man who breakes biscuits in two and saves the other half for later

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

Knowledge is currency here....

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there.

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.

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

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

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.

We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.

I don't think that white collar gives you sole right of access to the divine.

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 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.

That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time

Vendo sogni, piccoli comfort, tentazioni dolci e innocue.

Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin’s cave of sweet clichés.

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

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

Le cose proibite hanno sempre il gusto migliore.

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

CHURCH, not CHOCOLATE, is the TRUE MEANING of EASTER!!

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

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.

The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness.

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

Gli aromi di cioccolata, di vaniglia, del rame scaldato e della cannella che si uniscono danno alla testa, sono molto invitanti.

Voglio dare, voglio fare felici le persone, di certo non può far male.

Felicità. Semplice come un bicchiere di cioccolata o tortuosa come il cuore. Amara. Dolce. Viva.

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.

Sometimes, being told not to do something just makes us want it all the more. Sometimes, a little of what you crave is better than total abstinence.

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.

There's something very comforting about the ritual of jam-making. It speaks of cellars filled with preserves; of neat rows of jars on pantry shelves. It speaks of winter mornings and bowls of chocolat au lait, with thick slices of good fresh bread and last year's peach jam, like a promise of sunshine at the darkest point of the year. It speaks of four stone walls, a roof, and of seasons that turn in the same place, in the same way, year after year, with sweet familiarity. It is the taste of home.

There’s no such thing as magic,” I said. “Then call it something else.” She shrugged. “Call it attitude, if you like. Call it charisma, or chutzpah, or glamour, or charm. Because basically it’s just about standing straight, looking people in the eye, shooting them a killer smile, and saying, fuck off, I’m fabulous.

Il vento di marzo è un vento malato, diceva sempre mia madre. Eppure è piacevole, odora di linfa e ozono e del sale di mari lontani. Un buon mese, marzo, con febbraio che vola via dalla porta sul retro e la primavera che aspetta a quella principale. Un buon mese per un cambiamento.

If wishes were horses, beggers would ride

-Nem tudod elhallgattatni a kutyát? A fiú szánakozva nézett rá. -Nem igazán. - felelte. - Vlad hisz a szólásszabadságban.

Non ci sono demoni ma una serie di archetipi comuni a ogni civiltà.

«Cominci a scappare e sarai in fuga per sempre»

Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.” —Joanne Harris, Chocolat

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.

Roux flung a handful of dried shavings on to the embers of his fire; the scent was sharp and immediate, lemon grass and lavender, sage and applewood and pine, like the campfires of my childhood.

And it is partly the transience of it that delights me; so much loving preparation, so much art and experience, put into a pleasure that can last only a moment, and which only a few will ever fully appreciate.

Food is the thing that unites us all, that brings us back together. Food is the thing we can provide when there is nothing else we can do. That’s why we serve it at funerals. To remind us that Life always goes on.

- Забранено ми е да ям шоколад. Каро и оня идиот докторът. Заедно с всичко друго, което би могло да ми достави удоволствие - добави иронично. - Първо цигарите, после алкохола, а сега и това...Един Господ знае дали ако откажа и дишането няма да живея вечно. - (...) - Не че ги обвинявам. Те така ги разбират нещата. Да се пазиш - от всичко. От живота. От смъртта.

Why can't they see, mon père? Why can't they see what the woman is doing to us? Breaking down our community spirit, our sense of purpose. playing on what is worst and weakest in the secret heart. Earning for herself a kind of affection, of loyalty that - God help me! - I am weak enough to covet.

There she goes. How strange she is: my winter child; my changeling. Wild as an armful of birds, she flies everywhere in an instant. There is no keeping her inside, no making her sit quietly. She has never been like other girls, never like other children. Rosette is a force of nature, like the jackdaws that sit on the steeple and laugh, like a fall of unseasonal snow, like the blossom on the wind.

C'è un fascino indescrivibile nel maneggiare anonimi blocchi di copertura grezza, nel grattugiarli a mano nei grandi paioli di ceramica - non uso mai il miscelatore elettrico - e dopo nel sciogliere, mescolare, provare ogni mossa accurata con il termometro per lo zucchero fino a quando si raggiunge la giusta gradazione di calore per ottenere la trasformazione.

Anos de viagens com a minha mãe ensinaram-se que a comida é o passaporte universal. Quaisquer que sejam as barreiras de lingua, cultura ou geografia, a comida atravessa todas as fronteiras.

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 yet there is something oddly attractive about the crowded shop window with its piles of boxes and tins, and its Hallowe'en witches in darkest chocolate and colored straw, and plump marzipan pumpkins and maple-candy skulls just glimpsed beneath the half-closed shutter. There was a scent too- a smoky scent of apples and burnt sugar, vanilla and rum and cardamom and chocolate.

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 have never belonged to a tribe. It gives me a different perspective. Perhaps if I did, I too would feel ill at ease in Les Marauds. But I have always been different. Perhaps that's why I find it easier to cross the narrow boundaries between one tribe and the next. To belong so often means to exclude; to think in terms of us and them - to little words that, juxtaposed, so often lead to conflict.

As an antidote I read Jung and Herman Hesse, and learned about the collective unconscious. Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. What we fear. There are no demons but a collection of archetypes every civilization has in common. The fear of loss – Death. The fear of displacement – the Tower. The fear of transience – the Chariot. And yet Mother died. I put the cards away tenderly into their scented box. Goodbye, Mother. This is where our journey stops. This is where we stay to face whatever the wind brings us. I shall not read the cards again.

There was already a shop selling fabrics there; another sold mangoes and lentils and yams. There was a café- no alcohol, but mint tea, and glass-water pipes of kif- that fragrant blend of tobacco and marijuana so common in Morocco. There was a market every week, selling strange and exotic fruit and vegetables brought in from the docks at Marseille, and a little bakery, selling flatbread and pancakes and sweet milk rolls and honey pastries and almond briouats.

I made the coffee myself in Armande's curious small kitchen with its cast-iron range and low ceiling. Everything is clean there, but the one tiny window looks onto the river, giving the light a greenish underwater look. Hanging from the dark, unpainted beams are bunches of dry herbs in their muslin sachets. On the whitewashed walls, copper pans hang from hooks. The door- like all the doors in the house- has a hole cut into the base to allow free passage to her cats.

There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool's-gold, a layman's magic that even my mother might have relished. As I work, I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through-draft would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.

After that, the strawberry wood became my favorite place to go. In the summer I picked the fruit, and ran up and down the alleys of trees, and in autumn, collected acorns, and lay on my back watching the sky through the open branches. In the spring, I picked violets, and wild garlic by the riverbank. In winter I built tunnels under the barrows of brambles, and all year round I watched the well, and listened to its breathing, and sometimes dropped a coin or a stone into the water, and whispered into the darkness.

There are strawberries growing among my bulbs. Wild ones, seeded from God knows where, poking their pale little fingers among the tulips and crocuses. Wild strawberries are invasive; not quite as invasive as dandelions, but those little heart-shaped leaves conceal a powerful hunger for conquest, sending their runners everywhere, each one an outpost preparing itself for a future invasion. And yet I cannot bring myself, père, to curb their cheery exuberance. Though more or less worthless in terms of fruit, the little white flowers and pretty leaves make excellent ground count cover, keeping the thistles and ragwort at bay without suppressing my daffodils. And besides, in summer, there may be enough of the tiny red berries to put on a tart, or flavor a glassful of sweet white wine. That is, if the birds do not steal them first. They too enjoy their sweetness. Those strawberries will creep, Reynaud, said Narcisse's voice in my mind. Let them stay, and in a month, your beds will be nothing but strawberries.

A breeze, vanilla-scented, nutmeg milk, dark roast of cocoa beans over a slow fire. It isn't magic. Really it isn't. It's just a trick, a game I play. There's no such thing as real magic- and yet it works. Sometimes, it works. Can you hear me? I said. Not in my voice, but a shadow-voice, very light, like dappled leaves. She felt it then. I know she did. Turning, she stiffened; I made the door shine a little, ever so slightly, the color of the sky. Played with it, pretty, like a mirror in the sun, shining it on and off her face. Scent of woodsmoke in a cup; a dash of cream, sprinkle of sugar. Bitter orange, your favorite, 70 percent darkest chocolate over thick-cut oranges from Seville. Try me. Taste me. Test me.

First, I see her catch the scent. It's a combination of many things; the Christmas tree in the corner; the musty aroma of old house; orange and clove; ground coffee; hot milk; patchouli; cinnamon- and chocolate, of course; intoxicating, rich as Croesus, dark as death. She looks around, sees wall hangings, pictures, bells, ornaments, a dollhouse in the window, rugs on the floor- all in chrome yellow and fuchsia-pink and scarlet and gold and green and white. It's like an opium den in here, she almost says, then wonders at herself for being so fanciful. In fact she has never seen an opium den- unless it was in the pages of the Arabian Nights- but there's something about the place, she thinks. Something almost- magical.

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.

You ought to make something for Easter. You know. Eggs and stuff. Chocolate hens, rabbits, things like that. Like the shops in Agen." I remember them from my childhood; the Paris chocolateries with their baskets of foil-wrapped eggs, shelves of rabbits and hens, bells, marzipan fruits and marrons glacés, amourettes and filigree nests filled with petits fours and caramels, and a thousand and one epiphanies of spun-sugar magic carpet rides more suited to an Arabian harem than the solemnities of the Passion. "I remember my mother telling me about the Easter chocolates." There was never enough money to buy those exquisite things, but I always had my own cornet-surprise, a paper cone containing my Easter gifts, coins, paper flowers, hard-boiled eggs painted in bright enamel colors, a box of colored papier-mâché- painted with chickens, bunnies, smiling children among the buttercups, the same every year and stored carefully for the next time- encasing a tiny packet of chocolate raisins wrapped in cellophane, each one to be savored, long and lingeringly, in the lost hours of those strange nights between cities, with the neon glow of hotel signs blink-blinking between the shutters and my mother's breathing, slow and somehow eternal, in the umbrous silence.

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-

Spring has come with little prelude, like turning a rocky corner into a valley, and gardens and borders have blossomed suddenly lush with daffodils, irises, tulips. Even the derelict houses of Les Marauds are touched with color, but here the ordered gardens have run to rampant eccentricity; a flowering elder growing from the balcony of a house overlooking the water, a roof carpeted with dandelions, violets poking out of a crumbling facade. Once-cultivated plants have reverted to their wild state, small leggy geraniums thrusting between hemlock-umbels, self-seeded poppies scattered at random and bastardized from their original red to orange to palest mauve. A few days' sunshine is enough to coax them from sleep; after the rain they stretch and raise their heads toward the light. Pull out a handful of these supposed weeds, and there are sages and irises, pinks and lavenders, under the docks and ragwort.

And there were so many places to go. Thickets of bramble. Fallen trees. Ferns, and violets, and gorse, paths all lined with soft green moss. And in the very heart of the wood, there was a clearing, with a circle of stones, and an old well in the middle, next to a big dead oak tree, and everything- fallen branches, standing stones, even the well, with its rusty pump- draped and festooned and piled knee-high with ruffles and flounces of strawberries, with blackbirds picking over the fruit, and the scent like all of summer. It wasn't like the rest of the farm. Narcisse's farm is very neat, with everything set out in its place. A little field for sunflowers: one for cabbages; one for squash; one for Jerusalem artichokes. Apple trees to one side; peaches and plums to the other. And in the polytunnels, there were daffodils, tulips, freesias; and in season, lettuce, tomatoes, beans. All neatly planted, in rows, with nets to keep the birds from stealing them. But here there were no nets, or polytunnels, or windmills to frighten away the birds. Just that clearing of strawberries, and the old well in the circle of stones. There was no bucket in the well. Just the broken pump, and the trough, and a grate to cover the hole, which was very deep, and not quite straight, and filled with ferns and that swampy smell. And if you put your eye to the grate, you could see a roundel of sky reflected in the water, and little pink flowers growing out from between the cracks in the old stone. And there was a kind of draught coming up from under the ground, as if something was hiding there and breathing, very quietly.

I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....