Joanne Harris
As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.
No one should be so precious as to refuse criticism of their work. But to respect an opinion, we have to know that it was given honestly and with proper thought.
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Eye
I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.Collection: Letting Go
Change isn't always comfortable, but it is a fact of life.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Leaving
A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.Collection: Years
Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracleCollection: Summer
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.Collection: People
If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.Collection: Writing
Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.Collection: Life Is
We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.Collection: Summer
This isn't the first time the world has come to an end, and it won't be the last either.Collection: World
Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there isCollection: Survival
In any case, fire burns; that's its nature, and you can't expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor's house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?" Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. "So what you're saying is . . . I shouldn't play with fire," she said at last. Of course you should," said One-Eye gently. "But don't be surprised if the fire plays back.Collection: Eye
Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Dream
A named thing is a tamed thing.Collection: Tamed
That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. 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 timeCollection: Mother
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.Collection: Writing
Places have their own characters. . . . But the people begin to look the same.Collection: Character
Garden work clears the mind.Collection: Garden
The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things.Collection: Everyday Things
A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all.Collection: Men
Guilleaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the corner of avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.Collection: Dog
Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Evil
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.Collection: Mother
I carried recipes in my head like maps.Collection: Maps
I liked her better for showing a little spirit.Collection: Littles
A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.Collection: Good Luck
Library-denigrators, pay heed:suggesting that the Internet is a viable substitute for libraries is like saying porn could replace your wife.Collection: Wife
The process of giving is without limits.Collection: Giving
Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!Collection: Stars
I'd rather be a freak than a clone.Collection: Freak
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.Collection: Feelings
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.Collection: Suicide
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.Collection: Dog
The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.Collection: Giving
All those moments, those memories. Everything that we are, compressed in just two or three kilos of paper — the weight of a human heart.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: War
...we do not simply get showered with Hollywood money because we happened to write a little story about wizards one day. It's not winning the lottery. It's a real job, which real people do, and they have the same real problems as other real people.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Differences
Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored.Collection: Real
The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Loss
I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatinesCollection: Dream
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.Collection: Drama