Quotes from Joanne Harris

Once, we all lived in the sea," the grandmother had told her. "Its salt runs in our blood; our tears are memories of the ocean.

I am as free as the moonlight, and wild as the crashing of waves on the shore, and I am Queen of the blue salt road, and my story is only beginning.

Like all other acts of creation, magic is just a state of mind

Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currant. They change the sky, not their souls, that run across the ocean.

Bonne vent, jolie vent. (Good wind, nice wind, pretty wind.)

La fortuna è come un pendolo che oscilla attraverso i secoli, portando l'inevitabile.

You're really that good? he said at last. Loki shrugged. I'm Loki.

With a jolt of surprise, he realized he had not really wanted anything for twenty years.

And I, her daughter, listening wide-eyed to her charming apocrypha, with tales of Mithras and Baldur the Beautiful and Osiris and Quetzalcoatl all interwoven with stories of flying chocolates and flying carpets and the Triple Goddess and Aladdin's crystal cave of wonders and the cave from which Jesus rose after three days, amen, abracadabra, amen.

Online communities are an expression of loneliness.

Just for a moment, she thought she smelled something, a strange, vivid scent of sugar and apples and blackberry jelly and smoke. It was a nostalgic scent, and for a second she could almost understand why Jay loved this place so much, with its little vineyards and its apple trees and its roaming goats on the marsh flats.

Later, over his favorite grand crème in the Café des Marauds, he was listening with half an ear to Joséphine as she told him the story of the village's first chocolate festival and the resistance it had met from the church. The coffee was good, sprinkled with shavings of dark chocolate and with a cinnamon biscuit by the side of the cup. Narcisse was sitting opposite with his usual seed catalogue and a café-cassis.

The reader wants to be immersed in a story, not drowned in words

A história de toda a gente começa a meio da de outra pessoa, com meadas confusas de narrativa à espera de serem desenroladas. E de quem é esta história afinal?

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

Vraj má ?lovek len jeden život. Na internete zistíte, že to nie je pravda. Zadajte si do Googlu svoje meno a uvidíte, ko?kí ?alÅ¡í ho nosia. Sú to ?udia, ktorými by sme mohli byÃ…Â¥: úbožiak, Å¡portovec, takmer slávny herec, odsúdenec ?akajúci na smrÃ…Â¥, slávny kuchár, osoba s rovnakým dátumom narodenia ako vy... tiene toho, ?o mohlo byÃ…Â¥, keby bolo vÅ¡etko trochu inak.

Writers exist to question, to challenge, sometimes even to ridicule – the status quo. For a government to imprison a writer for doing this is to attack, not only freedom of speech, but freedom of the imagination. It is a backward, oppressive and ultimately futile gesture that can only lead to greater and more damaging social unrest. I condemn it entirely, and hope that Ahmet Altan is freed as soon as possible.

Working at King Henry's, and later at St Oswald's, I had always had to be tough on myself, and gentle on men. Men are so very fragile, Roy; so unused to being challenged.

I was surprised. It's not often that a woman receives an apology from a man, especially not in such circumstances. I am far more used to being told: You need to learn to take a joke, or; Why must you be so sensitive? Little girls are taught the lesson almost from the cradle. Boys will be boys. It's a man's world. It's because he likes you.

The smell of thyme was pungent in the air. It grew wild by the roadside. Thyme improves the memory, Joe used to say. He used to make a syrup out of it, keeping it in a bottle in the pantry. Two tablespoonsful every morning before breakfast. That clear greenish liquid smelled exactly like the night air over Lansquenet, crisp and earthy and nostalgic, like a summer day's weeding in the herb garden, and the radio on...

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.

They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

I might call in to see you anyway,' she said. 'If only to annoy the curé.

Don't you underestimate Dream,' she said. 'Dream is a river that flows both ways, from Order to Chaos and back again. Dream is the wellspring of creation; even Death is no match for it. Nothing dreamed is ever lost, and nothing lost for ever – that's the Auld Man telling us that what's destroyed can be rebuilt – aye, even castles in the clouds!