Joanne Harris Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid.

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
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
In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.

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

Joanne Harris
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.

Joanne Harris
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.

Joanne Harris
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.

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

Joanne Harris
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.

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
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
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.

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

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

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

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
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.

Joanne Harris
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.

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

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
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.

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

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

Joanne Harris