“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I'm going to be immoderate--and volatile--I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Places have their own characters. . . . But the people begin to look the same.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“The process of giving is without limits.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think...This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme,
Ou va-ti mistigri?
Passe sans faire de mai ici.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“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, quote from Chocolat
“I liked her better for showing a little spirit.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“The wind always brings us back to the same wall”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“I carried recipes in my head like maps.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Guilleaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the corner of avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“I envy the table its scars, the scorch marks caused by the hot bread tins. I envy its calm sense of time, and I wish I could say: I did this five years ago. I made this mark, this ring caused by a wet coffee cup, this cigarette burn, this ladder of cuts against the wood’s coarse grain. This is where Anouk carved her initials, the year she was six years old, this secret place behind the table leg. I did this on a warm day seven summers ago with the carving knife. Do you remember? Do you remember the summer the river ran dry? Do you remember? I envy the table’s calm sense of place. It has been here a long time. It belongs.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Why can no one here think of anything but chocolates?”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“For a time, then, we stay. For a time. Till the changes.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“he is the kind of man who breakes biscuits in two and saves the other half for later”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Like a flower she grows towards the light, without thinking or examining the process which moves her to do so. I wish I could do the same.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Polite contempt. The barbed and poisonous weapon of the righteous.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“The air is hot and rich with the scent of chocolate. Quite unlike the white powdery chocolate I knew as a boy, this has a throaty richness like the perfumed beans from the coffee stall on the market, a redolence of amaretto and tiramisù, a smoky, burned flavor that enters my mouth somehow and makes it water. There is a silver jug of the stuff on the counter, from which a vapor rises. I recall that I have not breakfasted this morning.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“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, quote from Chocolat
“At such times I feel I could die for love of her, my little stranger, my heart swelling dangerously so that the only release is to run too, my red coat flapping around my shoulders like wings, my hair a comet’s tail in the patchy blue sky.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“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.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“Old habits never die. And when you've once been in the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“You see, I do believe in miracles. I, who have passed through fire. I do believe.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
Joanne Harris
Born place: in Barnsley, The United Kingdom
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“When a man can listen to a woman's feelings without getting angry and frustrated, he gives her a wonderful gift.
He makes it safe for her to express herself.
The more she is able to express herself, the more she feels heard and understood, and the more she is able to give a man the loving trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement that he needs.”
― John Gray, quote from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
“Jen said some guy asked you but you didn't want to go. Why not?"
I shrug. "I have this character flaw? Called dignity?”
― A.G. Howard, quote from Splintered
“All I've ever wanted was to be near you.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Enna Burning
“I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT!”
― Megan Whalen Turner, quote from The King of Attolia
“This poem is very long
So long, in fact, that your attention span
May be stretched to its very limits
But that’s okay
It’s what’s so special about poetry
See, poetry takes time
We live in a time
Call it our culture or society
It doesn’t matter to me cause neither one rhymes
A time where most people don’t want to listen
Our throats wait like matchsticks waiting to catch fire
Waiting until we can speak
No patience to listen
But this poem is long
It’s so long, in fact, that during the time of this poem
You could’ve done any number of other wonderful things
You could’ve called your father
Call your father
You could be writing a postcard right now
Write a postcard
When was the last time you wrote a postcard?
You could be outside
You’re probably not too far away from a sunrise or a sunset
Watch the sun rise
Maybe you could’ve written your own poem
A better poem
You could have played a tune or sung a song
You could have met your neighbor
And memorized their name
Memorize the name of your neighbor
You could’ve drawn a picture
(Or, at least, colored one in)
You could’ve started a book
Or finished a prayer
You could’ve talked to God
Pray
When was the last time you prayed?
Really prayed?
This is a long poem
So long, in fact, that you’ve already spent a minute with it
When was the last time you hugged a friend for a minute?
Or told them that you love them?
Tell your friends you love them
…no, I mean it, tell them
Say, I love you
Say, you make life worth living
Because that, is what friends do
Of all of the wonderful things that you could’ve done
During this very, very long poem
You could have connected
Maybe you are connecting
Maybe we’re connecting
See, I believe that the only things that really matter
In the grand scheme of life are God and people
And if people are made in the image of God
Then when you spend your time with people
It’s never wasted
And in this very long poem
I’m trying to let a poem do what a poem does:
Make things simpler
We don’t need poems to make things more complicated
We have each other for that
We need poems to remind ourselves of the things that really matter
To take time
A long time
To be alive for the sake of someone else for a single moment
Or for many moments
Cause we need each other
To hold the hands of a broken person
All you have to do is meet a person
Shake their hand
Look in their eyes
They are you
We are all broken together
But these shattered pieces of our existence don’t have to be a mess
We just have to care enough to hold our tongues sometimes
To sit and listen to a very long poem
A story of a life
The joy of a friend and the grief of friend
To hold and be held
And be quiet
So, pray
Write a postcard
Call your parents and forgive them and then thank them
Turn off the TV
Create art as best as you can
Share as much as possible, especially money
Tell someone about a very long poem you once heard
And how afterward it brought you to them”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from This Girl
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The Time of the HeroBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
