Top 160 Joanne Harris Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

53. “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

54. “I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.”

— Joanne Harris

55. “I’m insatiably curious.”

— Joanne Harris

56. “Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It’s my specialty.”

— Joanne Harris

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

61. “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

62. “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

63. “I’m incapable of hiding my feelings when I’m around someone I don’t like.”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

65. “A named thing is a tamed thing.”

— Joanne Harris

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

70. “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

71. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

73. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

77. “Garden work clears the mind.”

— Joanne Harris

78. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

80. “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

81. “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

82. “You see, I do believe in miracles. I, who have passed through fire. I do believe.”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

85. “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

86. “Knowledge is currency here...”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

88. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

91. “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

92. “I’m not sure I believe in the whole ‘ghost-afterlife’ thing, but I think places are marked by people who have been there.”

— Joanne Harris

93. “There was something about total loyalty, uncritical devotion, endless patience, perpetual forgiveness and the general inability to believe that a loved one could ever do anything wrong that, frankly, just gave him the creeps.”

— Joanne Harris

94. “Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight.”

— Joanne Harris

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

— Joanne Harris

96. “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

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

— Joanne Harris

98. “Never trust a ruminant.”

— 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