Joanne Harris Quotes

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

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

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.

This isn't the first time the world has come to an end, and it won't be the last either.

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

I'd rather be a freak than a clone.

The process of giving is without limits.

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

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.

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

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

Love not often, but forever.

I carried recipes in my head like maps.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

I think everybody has a secret life.

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

I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia.

I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

Garden work clears the mind.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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

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

Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.

A thing named is a thing tamed.

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

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.

People reveal so much of their mental processes online, simply because the psychological effect of anonymity just means that a whole raft of inhibitions are left alone when people log on.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

Online communities are an expression of loneliness.