“Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are. ”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“A man who casts no shadow isn't really a man at all.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries-- escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky -- usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter’s world and becomes”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“If wishes were horses, beggers would ride”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
“Вечността е ужасно дълга, а тук, в задънената улица на годината, Смъртта изведнъж става съвсем осезаема.
Нали тъкмо и затова е и този празник на зимните светлини? Той е жалко опълчване срещу лицето на мрака. Наречето го Коледа, ако искате, но и вие и аз знаем, че става въпрос за нещо много по-древно. И зад всичките гирлянди и коледни песни, и благи вести, и подаръци се крие една по-сурова и по-дълбока истина.
Това е време на скръб и загуба, на жертвоприношения, на страх, тъма, пустота, смърт. Ацтеките са знаели, както и маите, че боговете им са копнеели не да спасят света, а да го унищожат, и единствено кръвта на жертвоприношението би могла да ги умилостиви.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from The Girl with No Shadow
Joanne Harris
Born place: in Barnsley, The United Kingdom
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“A long time ago I realized that, as psychiatrists, we had to have a healthy respect for our own humanness, and our own smallness in the face of what we were dealing with. If a person got better, we could appreciate that we had done a good job, but we also needed to realize that God – or luck – was on our side. If the person got worse and had to go to a state hospital, we had to keep ourselves from feeling that we hadn’t done enough. For the truth is, we were powerless in so many of these situations. We did what we could, but sometimes the illness was just bigger than we were. (233)”
― quote from The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness
“You can't wait around for destiny to give you what you think you deserve, you have to earn it, even if you think you've paid your dues.”
― Slash, quote from Slash
“It is commonplace observation that women are forever trying to straighten their hair if it is curly and curl it if it is straight, bind their breasts if they are large and pad them if they are small, darken their hair if it is light and lighten it if it is dark. Not all these measures are dictated by the fantom of fashion. They all reflect dissatisfaction with the body as it is, and an insistent desire that it be otherwise, not natural but controlled, fabricated. Many of the devices adopted by women are not cosmetic or ornamental, but disguise of the actual, arising from fear and distaste.”
― Germaine Greer, quote from The Female Eunuch
“word in block capitals, and when he wasn’t certain of the spelling he put down the possible alternative letters below; he wanted to be sure of any translation the first time. “My, you do work late,” whispered a voice from behind him. Adam spun round, feeling like a burglar who had been”
― Jeffrey Archer, quote from A Matter of Honor
“But it seemed I had fallen for a human—and not just any human, the worst possible human out of all seven billion possibilities.”
― Anne Greenwood Brown, quote from Lies Beneath
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