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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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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The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.
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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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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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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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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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The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people.
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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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If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.
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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 can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
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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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I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.
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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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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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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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I am fascinated by how people eat and what it reveals about them.
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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'm insatiably curious.
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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.
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I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.
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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.