Top 160 Joanne Harris Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “What is it that the slave dreams? The slave dreams of being the master.”

— Joanne Harris

52. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

53. “We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.”

— Joanne Harris

54. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

55. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

56. “Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.”

— Joanne Harris

57. “I’m politically inclined towards the left, but I don’t like to be in anyone’s gang; I’m a bit of a loose cannon.”

— Joanne Harris

58. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

59. “Ho sognato di essere vecchio. E tu, tu mi eri accanto. Per sempre giovane, in mano una tazza di stelle.”

— Joanne Harris

60. “I don’t listen to music when I’m writing, but I often do when I’m reworking, editing or when I need to relax.”

— Joanne Harris

61. “I’m insatiably curious.”

— Joanne Harris

62. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

63. “One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.”

— Joanne Harris

64. “Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the End of the World, and goblins had been at the cellar again.”

— Joanne Harris

65. “Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.”

— Joanne Harris

66. “I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.”

— Joanne Harris

67. “A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”

— Joanne Harris

68. “A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.”

— Joanne Harris

69. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

71. “I’ll let you take your pick,” he said. “But on one condition. We’ll stand all our eligible men behind a screen, with only their feet on display. Then you’ll choose. You’ll choose your husband by his feet. Agreed?” I stared at him. I mean, really. His feet? What new perversion was this?”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

73. “Even the damned can dream – infact, it’s part of their torment. To escape, even for a second or two, to forget reality and drift, only to be yanked back into the waking world like a fish caught on a line... Yes. In some ways that’s even worse than to have no relief at all. That second of two, on awakening, when anything still seems possible.”

— Joanne Harris

74. “Of course I didn’t pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.”

— Joanne Harris

75. “Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.”

— Joanne Harris

76. “I knew that Freyja was shallow, but until that moment I hadn’t been sure how far she would go for the sake of personal adornment. Well, folks, she went all the way, every way – and not just once, but four times, with four uncouth and demanding men who hadn’t had a woman in years.”

— Joanne Harris

77. “Was it my fault that I got out of hand? – Loki.”

— Joanne Harris

78. “If you were to be stranded on a desert island, what three items would you take? I gave this frivolous answer: A cat, a hat and a piece of string.”

— Joanne Harris

79. “I’m not fond of cities: the constant activity and swarms of people.”

— Joanne Harris

80. “Garden work clears the mind.”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

82. “Weed and wheat cannot grow together in peace.”

— Joanne Harris

83. “No one looks at us. We might as well be invisible; or clothing marks us as strangers, transients. They are polite, so polite; no one stares at us.”

— Joanne Harris

84. “Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.”

— Joanne Harris

85. “Love not often, but forever.”

— Joanne Harris

86. “I speak as I must and cannot be silent.”

— Joanne Harris

87. “No one sees clearly during a war. History gives perspective.”

— Joanne Harris

88. “As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.”

— Joanne Harris

89. “See, this is the thing about history. His story. That’s all it is. The Old Man’s version of events, which basically the rest of us are supposed to accept as the undisputed truth. Well, call me cynical, but I’ve never been one to take things on trust, and I happen to know that history is nothing but spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.”

— Joanne Harris

90. “Never trust a ruminant.”

— Joanne Harris

91. “Food is the thing that unites us all, that brings us back together. Food is the thing we can provide when there is nothing else we can do. That’s why we serve it at funerals. To remind us that Life always goes on.”

— Joanne Harris

92. “Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.”

— Joanne Harris

93. “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.”

— Joanne Harris

94. “It all begins so hopefully, but these Worlds we build for ourselves are all just castles in the sand, waiting for the evening tide.”

— Joanne Harris

95. “I have never belonged to a tribe. It gives me a different perspective. Perhaps if I did, I too would feel ill at ease in Les Marauds. But I have always been different. Perhaps that’s why I find it easier to cross the narrow boundaries between one tribe and the next. To belong so often means to exclude; to think in terms of us and them – to little words that, juxtaposed, so often lead to conflict.”

— Joanne Harris

96. “It’s a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her.”

— Joanne Harris

97. “I don’t pretend to know much about love, but that’s how great love comes to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret.”

— Joanne Harris

98. “But stories are worlds. New worlds for us to visit. In stories, we live forever.”

— Joanne Harris

99. “Well, that’s history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue, and for the most part written by folk who weren’t even there.”

— Joanne Harris

100. “There’s an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don’t help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don’t help, tell better lies.”

— Joanne Harris