Joanne Harris Quotes
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Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
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As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.
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I'm quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don't mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out.
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If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.
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I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
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The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.
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I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.
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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.
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Some areas of technology really don't interest me at all, but I welcome anything that makes life easier instead of harder.
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In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.
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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.
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The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people.
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My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.
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I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.
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It may be something to do with my having been to a girls' school, but I'm far more comfortable making male friendships than female ones. My friends tend to be men and their significant others.
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If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.
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I am fascinated by how people eat and what it reveals about them.
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I was convinced I'd hate Twitter - but I've come to like it very much. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends and colleagues I wish I could see more often - I sometimes feel a little isolated living in Yorkshire, and it's nice to have the contact.
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I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.
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People reveal so much of their mental processes online, simply because the psychological effect of anonymity just means that a whole raft of inhibitions are left alone when people log on.
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I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.
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Writing books and being paid for it - it's not like winning the Lottery. You can't suddenly go, 'Yippee!' and start throwing tenners in the air. I've done pretty well out of it, but certainly not enough to say, 'Right, that's me set up for life.'
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We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.
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I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.