Joanne Harris Quotes

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

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.

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.

She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.

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.

I'd rather be a freak than a clone.

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!

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

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

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

Love not often, but forever.

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.

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

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

A thing named is a thing tamed.

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

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

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 man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.

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.

Change isn't always comfortable, but it is a fact of life.

I speak as I must and cannot be silent.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Always look on the bright side. And if there is no bright side? Look away.

Work. Like pain, I sensed that this was an experience I would want to avoid as often as possible.

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

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 the King of the gods; because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.

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.

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

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

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

Clever folk aren’t popular, by and large. They arouse suspicion. They don’t fit in.

The wind always brings us back to the same wall

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. No one's immune to bribery.

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

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

In any case, fire burns; that's its nature, and you can't expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor's house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?" Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. "So what you're saying is . . . I shouldn't play with fire," she said at last. Of course you should," said One-Eye gently. "But don't be surprised if the fire plays back.

They tell you revenge isn't worth it. I say there's nothing finer.

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?

There's good news and slightly less good news.

Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it.

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

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?

Was it my fault that I got out of hand? --Loki

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.

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

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

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.

Most problems can be solved through cake.

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

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.

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

It isn't just a village. The houses aren't just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference.

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

From this I think we can all conclude that the cow was the primary instigator of everything that followed - war, Tribulation, the End of the Worlds. Lesson One: never trust a rumiant.

Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracle

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

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.

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

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.

All words have power, of course, but names are the most potent of all, which is why the gods had so many.

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.

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.

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

A named thing is a tamed thing.

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

Anything that can be dreamed is true.

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

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.

Nothing dreamed is ever lost, and nothing lost forever.

Garden work clears the mind.

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

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.)

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.

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.

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

Knowledge is currency here....

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

I know you,” said Maddy. “You’re -“ “What’s a name?” Loki grinned. “Wear it like a coat; turn it, burn it, throw it aside, and borrow another. One-Eye knows; you should ask him.” “But Loki died,” she said, shaking her head. “He died on the field at Ragnarok.” “Not quite.” He pulled a face. “You know there’s rather a lot the Oracle didn’t foretell, and old tales have a habit of getting twisted.” “But in any case, that was centuries ago,” Maddy said bewildered. “I mean - that was the End of the World, wasn’t it?” “So?” said Loki impatiently. “This isn’t the first time the world has come to an end, and it won’t be the last either.

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

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.