Joanne Harris

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

“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.”

“The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And yet, it was still a performance. Odin and I both knew it. It was a kind of play, a dream of how things might have been if he and I had been capable of trusting each other for a change. And so we hunted, and sang, and laughed, and told heavily edited stories of the good old days, while each of us watched the other and wondered when the knife would fall.”

“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.”

“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.”

“No point carrying useless ballast. It won't change a thing.”

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

“The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, Will I? Won’t I? in pitiful indecision.”

“No one should be so precious as to refuse criticism of their work. But to respect an opinion, we have to know that it was given honestly and with proper thought.”

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

“The dead know everything but they don't give a damn.”

“The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”