Quotes from Joanne Harris

From a certain height, everyone looks the same - men, women, villains, kings - as if rank and fortune were simply an accident of perspective.

I don't think that white collar gives you sole right of access to the divine.

And when you fall from that parapet,the sound you'll be hearing as you go down will be me,laughing my head off.

I've never viewed you as an enemy, more an adversary...

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes

The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness.

There's also a lot of random stuff about poetry, flowers and lute music, plus kissing and cuddling (lots of this), wearing similar outfits, talking incessantly about the current object of devotion, and generally losing one's faculties.

Most adults assume that the feelings of adolescence don't count, somehow, and that those searing passions of rage and hate and embarrassment and horror and hopeless, abject love are something your grow out of, something hormonal, a practice run for the Real Thing. It wasn't. At 13 *everything* counts; there are sharp edges on everything, and all of them cut.

The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go, most people aren't really all that much different.

If I'm going to die today, the least I can do is look fabulous while I'm doing it.

Those people who say that words have no power know nothing of the nature of words

That's Catholicism for you. A perpetual war between repression and excess.

And yes,I was fabulous.

Rock salt and bread by the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood on our pillow, to sweeten our dreams.

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.

Call me cynical if you like. But it all sounds a bit too convenient. The Authorized Version of events leaves out a number of details, which Creationists seem content to ignore. I personally have my doubts – not least about the giant cow – although even now you have to beware of how you express these sentiments.

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin's cave of sweet clichés.

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

There's no such thing as magic," I said. "Then call it something else." She shrugged. "Call it attitude, if you like. Call it charisma, or chutzpah, or glamour, or charm. Because basically it's just about standing straight, looking people in the eye, shooting them a killer smile, and saying, fuck off, I'm fabulous.

Vendo sogni, piccoli comfort, tentazioni dolci e innocue.

He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work.

Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch?

So much of his life seemed to be like this now, a blur of days without anything to define them from each other, like episodes of a soap he watched out of habit, even though none of the characters interested him.