Quotes from Joanne Harris

Adesso, fare cioccolato è una cosa diversa. Oh, certo, ci vuole comunque una certa abilità. Leggerenzza nel tocco, rapidità, una pazienza che mia madre non avrebbe mai avuto.

The pancakes would be easy, but the batter, made to an old recipe, with buckwheat flour and cider instead of milk, needed to rest for a couple of hours. Eat them on their own, or with salted butter, or sausages, or with goat's cheese, onion marmalade, or duck confit with peaches.

L'amore è l'unica costante in questo difficile mondo razionale, l'amore e la sua metà oscura, l'odio.

Non permettete a nessuno di dirvi che la vendetta non è dolce: lo è. Lo so.

Clever folk aren't popular, by and large. They arouse suspicion. They don't fit in. They can be useful, as I proved on a number of occasions, but among the general population there's always a sense of vague mistrust, as if the very qualities that make them indispensable also make them dangerous.

She handed me one of the finished mendiants . A fat black cherry made for the nose; a candied lemon slice for the mouth. She had made all her chocolates into little faces. Features added in gold leaf; almonds, raisins, poppy seeds. All of the chocolates different, all of them marked with her signature: Love me. Feed me. Free me - And all of the chocolates were smiling.

To belong so often means to exclude;

Monsieur Moscat .... You won't ever guess HIS favorite, [Lucie] says. He hasn't gotten one. [Vianne:] I find that difficult to believe, I smile. Everyone has a favorite. Even Monsieur Muscat. Lucie considers this for a moment. Maybe his favorite is the one he takes from someone else, she tells me limpidly.

A przecie? prawdziwe czarowanie nie jest zgo?a dramatyczne, to po prostu skupienie my?li na upragnionym celu.

We began with dates, the traditional way of breaking fast at Ramadan. Then, harissa and rose-petal soup, with crêpes mille trous , saffron couscous and roast spiced lamb. Almonds and apricots for dessert, with rahat loukoum and coconut rice.

I've always recognized that look – that look of sanctified contempt adopted by the righteous.

Love is the thing that only God sees.

People are reserved, pretending indifference though inwardly they burn with curiosity.

To belong so often means to exclude; to think in terms of us and them - two little words that, juxtaposed, so often lead to conflict. - Monsieur Le Curé.

A tiny chuckle emerged from the bottle's throat as the wine filled the glass.

Oh, she understood wine, my mother. She understood the sweetening process, the fermentation, the seething and mellowing of life in the bottle, the darkening, the slow transformations, the birth of a new vintage in a bouquet of aromas like a magician's bunch of paper flowers. If only she had had time and patience enough for us. A child is not a fruit tree. She understood that too late. There is no recipe to take a child into sweet, safe adulthood. She should have known that.

If only I had patience. If only I could sleep till spring. If only I were the hawthorn tree, too old to love, too wise to hate.

All right, Monsieur Jay,' she said, smiling. 'I'll tell them you're OK.

The road to adulthood is filled with contradictions, and I was still young enough to half believe the lies with which that road is paved.

No one sees clearly during a war. History gives perspective

I know you don't remember her much, Narcisse, but your mother was very strong. Stronger than anyone I've known; strong and sweet as peach liqueur .

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive p184

There are stories everywhere; in the air; the food you eat; in the embers of the fire. […] This is my story; the story of the land-folk and the seal-folk, a story of love, and of treachery, and of the call of the ocean.

Take from it what you most need and pass it on to someone else, for this is how stories — and selkie — move on; changing, unchanging, like the tides, taking with them what they can and scattering tales to the four winds, like seeds upon the ocean.