Joanne Harris Quotes
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I first saw the island of Noirmoutier when I was two weeks old. I think it's probably safe to say that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time; but I grew to love it as year after year I spent holidays there at my grandparents' cottage.
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I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia.
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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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I think everybody has a secret life.
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I have an English identity and a French identity. When I'm in France, I'm more outgoing. And the French part of me cooks, whereas the English part of me writes.
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If you can actually get someone to sit on the edge of their seat and feel nervous if there's a knock at the door, then you've done something pretty terrific as a writer.
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My parents were language teachers. They talked about teaching all the time and all their friends were teachers. It was considered a pre-ordained thing that I would go into teaching.
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I tend to write about more than one generation because as a child I had contact with more than one generation; it was normal to be around older people.
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A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online.
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I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you've been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things... Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.
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I sublimate different parts of my personality through my characters. Which is worrying, as some of them can be a bit nasty. I'm pleased the stuff on the page isn't inside me any more.
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I was a very bad accountant; I didn't care about money, golf or discovering fraud. After about a year I was sacked; then I went into teacher training.
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I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.
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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.
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From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.
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I've nothing against kids reading anything they please, but I do have a problem with pink books for girls and black books for boys.
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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.
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I'm not sure I believe in the whole 'ghost-afterlife' thing, but I think places are marked by people who have been there.
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I find littering very annoying. It's a minor but also a major thing: a society that litters is one that also has so little respect for the environment and, consequently, other people. If we had clean streets, a lot of other things would be fixed almost effortlessly.
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I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.
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When I write, I'm constantly putting myself in the position of someone else as I write using myriad voices; I think that's a life skill all people should learn.
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I'm not fond of cities: the constant activity and swarms of people.
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Online communities are an expression of loneliness.
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I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.