Quotes from Joanne Harris

The day stretched out in front of him like an empty road in the desert.

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries-- escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky -- usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins

Le cose proibite hanno sempre il gusto migliore.

Il vento di marzo è un vento malato, diceva sempre mia madre. Eppure è piacevole, odora di linfa e ozono e del sale di mari lontani. Un buon mese, marzo, con febbraio che vola via dalla porta sul retro e la primavera che aspetta a quella principale. Un buon mese per un cambiamento.

The serpent eating itself, tail-first. We live to repeat the same mistakes, to push away the ones we love, to move on when we want to stay, to wait in silence when we should speak. In the life we have chosen to lead, loss is the only constant. Loss, that eats up everything – like the snake, even itself.

I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder if this is temptation. If so, I am stone.

Weeds and wheat cannot grow peacefully together. Any gardener could tell you the same thing.

Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It's my specialty.

He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable.

Wisdom isn't everything. Survival requires an element of trickery, Chaos, subterfuge. All qualities I possess (if I may say so) in abundance.

And yet I could still hear them. As if some part of their essence had evaporated into the air, become a part of this place, ingrained, like the scent of cigarettes and burning sugar, in the woodwork and plaster. Everything was buzzing with that vanished presence, buzzing and singing and laughing louder than ever before, stone and tile and polished wood, all whispering with agitation and excitement; never still, never silent.

There was a quote he could not quite remember, something about the past being an island surrounded by time. He had missed the last boat to the island.

CHURCH, not CHOCOLATE, is the TRUE MEANING of EASTER!!

Why can't they see, mon père? Why can't they see what the woman is doing to us? Breaking down our community spirit, our sense of purpose. playing on what is worst and weakest in the secret heart. Earning for herself a kind of affection, of loyalty that - God help me! - I am weak enough to covet.

There she goes. How strange she is: my winter child; my changeling. Wild as an armful of birds, she flies everywhere in an instant. There is no keeping her inside, no making her sit quietly. She has never been like other girls, never like other children. Rosette is a force of nature, like the jackdaws that sit on the steeple and laugh, like a fall of unseasonal snow, like the blossom on the wind.

Sometimes, being told not to do something just makes us want it all the more. Sometimes, a little of what you crave is better than total abstinence.

Set a church clock wrong to fool the devil, my mother always told me. But in this case I suspect the devil is not fooled. Not for a minute.

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.

We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope.

the Blessed Damozel essence of every dream and fairy story and legend and fear ...

We're gods, not saints. Everyone lies. Everyone cheats. Everyone scores off everyone else.

No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing.

C'è un fascino indescrivibile nel maneggiare anonimi blocchi di copertura grezza, nel grattugiarli a mano nei grandi paioli di ceramica - non uso mai il miscelatore elettrico - e dopo nel sciogliere, mescolare, provare ogni mossa accurata con il termometro per lo zucchero fino a quando si raggiunge la giusta gradazione di calore per ottenere la trasformazione.

Gli aromi di cioccolata, di vaniglia, del rame scaldato e della cannella che si uniscono danno alla testa, sono molto invitanti.