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Joanne Harris

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Famous Joanne Harris Quotes

“But when I reached Xocolatl, my heart beating ferociously, I found the display window brightly lit, with fairy lights on the window-ledge and along the shelves of chocolates. Cellophane-wrapped and gleaming like a pirate's buried treasure, they seemed to glow with a precious light, those gilded piles of mendiants, and truffles, rose creams and santons de Margot, while above them rose the centerpiece; a statuette of the Bonne Mère, much larger than the ones in the shop, one hand raised in benediction, the other holding the infant Christ, and robed in darkest chocolate. And all around the dishes and jars were origami animals; little angular butterflies and cranes and fish and rabbits in multicolored paper. I detected the hand of Grandmother Li: imagined those clever old hands at work, folding the pretty papers.”

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Book:Vianne
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“What's your favorite?' I must have looked confused. That's my trick; no one ever asks me which chocolate I prefer. 'Let me guess,' said the man in black, and, looking over the display, seemed to consider the chocolates, the candied fruits, the nougatines. Lingered for a moment over the green tea truffles; the salted pralines. Then he looked up, and his sea-blue eyes were filled with crazed reflections. 'You didn't like chocolate at first,' he said. 'You never used to eat it. But now, you're starting to understand. Its power to awaken the past; its dark and troubled history. The stories it tells about itself. It's many re-inventions. Ah. Here we are.' He paused at a tray of chocolate-dipped cherries, still with the stalks attached, and said. 'These, I think, Vianne Rocher. Dark chocolate, not always your favorite, but here, with cherries, it evokes something almost magical. Bite through the bitter chocolate shell to the brandied fruit inside. Hold the little stone on the tongue. Roll it gently around your mouth, like a long-kept secret.' He smiled, and I found myself liking him in spite of the coldness in my heart: the Man in Black has a kind of charm that I would never have suspected. I said: 'You may be right, monsieur. Yours is---' A gilded thread in the air. A little bastide on the Garonne. Not Vianne, but somewhere close; light, like the bloom on an apricot, a sky like the edge of forever---- I said, in a slightly trembling voice: 'Apricot hearts. They're your favorite.”

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Book:Vianne
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“We made close to forty boxes today. Fifteen truffles (still selling well), but also a batch of coconut squares, some sour cherry gobstoppers, some bitter-coated orange peel, some violet creams, and a hundred or so lunes de miel, those little discs of chocolate made to look like the waxing moon, with her profile etched in white against the dark face. It's such a delight to choose a box, to linger over the shape- will it be heart shaped, round, or square? To select the chocolates with care; to see them nestled between the folds of crunchy mulberry-colored paper; to smell the mingled perfumes of cream, caramel, vanilla, and dark rum; to choose a ribbon; to pick out a wrapping; to add flowers or paper hearts; to hear the silky whisssh of rice paper against the lid-”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“I look into the chocolaterie. It looks warm in there, almost intimate. Candles are burning on the tables; the Advent window is lit with a rose glow. It smells of orange and clove from the pomander hanging above the door; of pine from the tree; of the mulled wine that we are serving alongside our spiced hot chocolate; and of fresh gingerbread straight out of the oven. It draws them in- three or four at a time- regulars and strangers and tourists alike. They stop at the window, catch the scent, and in they come, looking a little dazed, perhaps, at the many scents and colors and all their favorites in their little glass boxes- bitter orange cracknel; mendiants du roi; hot chili squares; peach brandy truffle; white chocolate angel; lavender brittle- all whispering inaudibly- Try me. Taste me. Test me.”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“Who is Zozie? I ask myself. Those eyes see much farther than dishes to be washed, or a banknote folded under the rim of a plate. Blue eyes are easier to read, and yet the trick of the trade that has served me so often- if not so well- along the years, for some reason fails to work at all with her. Some people are like that, I tell myself. But dark or light, soft-centered or brittle, bitterest orange or rose cream or manon blanc or vanilla truffle, I have no idea whether she even likes chocolate at all, still less her favorite. So- why is it I think that she knows mine?”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“But Zozie was already making plans- seemingly unaware of the impact of that casual word- plans for a line of handmade truffles, the simplest of all chocolates to make; and then, perhaps some mendiants- my own favorites- sprinkled with almonds, sour cherries, and fat yellow sultanas. I could do it with my eyes closed. Even a child can make mendiants, and Anouk had often helped me in the days of Lansquenet, selecting the plumpest raisins, the sweetest cranberries (always keeping a generous portion aside for herself), and arranging them on the discs of melted chocolate, dark or light, in careful designs.”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“She buys only the best couverture, from a fair trade supplier down near Marseille, and pays for it all in cash. A dozen blocks of each kind, to begin with, she says; but I already know from her eager response that a dozen blocks will not be enough. She used to make all her own stock, so she tells me, and though I'll admit I didn't quite believe it at first, the way she has thrown herself back into the business tells me that she was not exaggerating. The process is deft and peculiarly therapeutic to watch. First comes the melting and tempering of the raw couverture: the process that enables it to leave its crystalline state and take on the glossy, malleable form necessary to make the chocolate truffles. She does it all on a granite slab, spreading out the melted chocolate like silk and gathering it back toward her using a spatula. Then it goes back into the warm copper, the process to be repeated until she declares it done. She rarely uses the sugar thermometer. She has been making chocolates for so long, she tells me, that she can simply sense when the correct temperature has been reached. I believe her; certainly over the past three days I have been watching her, she has never produced a less than flawless batch. During that time I have learned to observe with a critical eye: to check for streaks in the finished product; for the unappealing pale bloom that denotes incorrectly tempered chocolate; for the high gloss and sharp snap that are the indicators of good-quality work.”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“Zozie was still watching me with that patient half-smile, as if she expected me to say something more. When I didn't, she simply shrugged and held out a dish of mendiants. She makes them as I do myself: the chocolate thin enough to snap but thick enough to satisfy; a generous sprinkle of fat raisins; a walnut, an almond; a violet; a crystallized rose. "Try one," she said. "What do you think?" The gunpowder scent of chocolate arose from the little dish of mendiants, smelling of summer and lost time. He had tasted of chocolate when I first kissed him; and the scent of damp grass had come from the ground where we had lain side by side; and his touch had been unexpectedly soft, and his hair like summer marigolds in the dying light- Zozie was still holding out the dish of mendiants. It's made of blue Murano glass, with a little gold flower on the side. It's only a bauble, and yet I'm fond of it. Roux gave it to me in Lansquenet, and I have carried it with me ever since, in my luggage, in my pockets, like a touchstone. I looked up and saw Zozie looking at me. Her eyes were a distant, fairytale blue, like something you might see in dreams. "You won't tell anyone?" I said. "Of course not." She picked up a chocolate between delicate fingers and held it out for me to take. Rich, dark chocolate, rum-soaked raisins, vanilla, rose, and cinnamon... "Try one, Vianne," she said with a smile. "I happen to know they're your favorites.”

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Book:The Girl with No Shadow
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“Besides, we have more chocolates to deliver in Les Marauds; coconut truffles for Omi; rose and cardamom for Fatima and her daughters; chili for old Mahjoubi, that warms the heart and brings courage. And one more package, for Inès; tied with a red silk ribbon. The gift that crosses all cultures; that brings a smile to the sourest face; that pulls back the years and takes us to a simpler, sweeter time.”

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Book:Peaches for Father Francis
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“I go back into the kitchen. There are mendiants cooling on a sheet of greaseproof paper; little discs of chocolate, scattered with pieces of crystallized fruit; chopped almonds and pistachios; dried rose petals and gold leaf. Mendiants were always my favorites; so simple to make that even a child- even Anouk at five years old- was able to make them unsupervised. A sour cherry for the nose; a lemon slice for the mouth. Even her mendiants were smiling.”

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Book:The Strawberry Thief
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“This morning it was sunny and bright, and Maman was making Easter things. There were eggs, and hens, and rabbits, and ducks, all in different sizes and varieties of chocolate, and Maman was decorating them with gold leaf, and hundreds and thousands, and sugar roses and candied fruit. Later she'll wrap them in cellophane, like fabulous bunches of flowers, each tied with a long curly ribbon of a different color, and put them all on shelves at the back, as part of her annual Easter display.”

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Book:The Strawberry Thief
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“There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool's-gold, a layman's magic that even my mother might have relished. As I work, I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through-draft would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“You ought to make something for Easter. You know. Eggs and stuff. Chocolate hens, rabbits, things like that. Like the shops in Agen." I remember them from my childhood; the Paris chocolateries with their baskets of foil-wrapped eggs, shelves of rabbits and hens, bells, marzipan fruits and marrons glacés, amourettes and filigree nests filled with petits fours and caramels, and a thousand and one epiphanies of spun-sugar magic carpet rides more suited to an Arabian harem than the solemnities of the Passion. "I remember my mother telling me about the Easter chocolates." There was never enough money to buy those exquisite things, but I always had my own cornet-surprise, a paper cone containing my Easter gifts, coins, paper flowers, hard-boiled eggs painted in bright enamel colors, a box of colored papier-mâché- painted with chickens, bunnies, smiling children among the buttercups, the same every year and stored carefully for the next time- encasing a tiny packet of chocolate raisins wrapped in cellophane, each one to be savored, long and lingeringly, in the lost hours of those strange nights between cities, with the neon glow of hotel signs blink-blinking between the shutters and my mother's breathing, slow and somehow eternal, in the umbrous silence.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“I looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper, rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts, and long curls of multicolored ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates, the pralines, Venus's nipples, truffles, mendiants, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose petals, sugared violets... Protected from the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin's cave of sweet clichés. And in the middle she has built a magnificent centerpiece. A gingerbread house, walls of chocolate-coated pain d'épices with the detail piped on in silver and gold icing, roof tiles of florentines studded with crystallized fruits, strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls, marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees... And the witch herself, dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak half-astride a broomstick that is in reality a giant guimauve, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days...”

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Book:Chocolat
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“I spent most of the afternoon tempering the new batch of couverture and working on the window display. A thick covering of green tissue paper for the grass. Paper flowers- daffodils and daisies, Anouk's contribution- pinned to the window frame. Green-covered tins that had once contained cocoa powder, stacked up against each other to make a craggy mountainside. Crinkly cellophane paper wraps it like a covering of ice. Running past and winding into the valley, a river of blue silk ribbon, upon which a cluster of houseboats sits quiet and unreflecting. And below, a procession of chocolate figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, some with raisin eyes, pink marzipan ears, tails made of licorice-whips, with sugar flowers between their teeth... And mice. On every available surface, mice. Running up the sides of the hill, nestling in corners, even on the riverboats. Pink and white sugar coconut mice, chocolate mice of all colors, variegated mice marbled through with truffle and maraschino cream, delicately tinted mice, sugar-dappled frosted mice. And standing above them, the Pied Piper resplendent in his red and yellow, a barley-sugar flute in one hand, his hat in the other. I have hundreds of molds in my kitchen, thin plastic ones for the eggs and the figures, ceramic ones for the cameos and liqueur chocolates. With them I can re-create any facial expression and superimpose it upon a hollow shell, adding hair and detail with a narrow-gauge pipe, building up torso and limbs in separate pieces and fixing them in place with wires and melted chocolate.... A little camouflage- a red cloak, rolled from marzipan. A tunic, a hat of the same material, a long feather brushing the ground at his booted feet. My Pied Piper looks a little like Roux, with his red hair and motley garb.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“My hand lingers in spite of itself; a hovering dragonfly above a cluster of dainties. A Plexiglas tray with a lid protects them; the name of each piece is lettered on the lid in fine, cursive script. The names are entrancing: Bitter orange cracknell. Apricot marzipan roll. Cerisette russe. White rum truffle. Manon blanc. Nipples of Venus. I feel myself flushing beneath the mask. How could anyone order something with a name like that? And yet they look wonderful, plumply white in the light of my torch, tipped with darker chocolate. I take one from the top of the tray. I hold it beneath my nose; it smells of cream and vanilla. No one will know. I realize that I have not eaten chocolate since I was a boy, more years ago than I can remember, and even then it was a cheap grade of chocolat à croquer, fifteen percent cocoa solids- twenty for the dark- with a sticky aftertaste of fat and sugar. Once or twice I bought Süchard from the supermarket, but at five times the price of the other, it was a luxury I could seldom afford. This is different altogether; the brief resistance of the chocolate shell as it meets the lips, the soft truffle inside.... There are layers of flavor like the bouquet of a fine wine, a slight bitterness, a richness like ground coffee; warmth brings the flavor to life, and it fills my nostrils, a taste succubus that has me moaning.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“Anouk reads a book of nursery rhymes behind the counter and keeps an eye on the door as I prepare a batch of mendiants- thus named because they were sold by beggars and gypsies years ago- in the kitchen. These are my own favorites- biscuit-sized discs of dark, milk, or white chocolate upon which have been scattered lemon-rind, almonds, and plump Malaga raisins. Anouk likes the white ones, though I prefer the dark, made with the finest seventy-percent couverture.... Bitter-smooth on the tongue with the taste of the secret tropics.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“We make the delicate liqueur chocolates, the rose-petal clusters, the gold-wrapped coins, the violet creams, the chocolate cherries and almond rolls, in batches of fifty at a time, laying them out onto greased tins to cool. Hollow eggs and animal figures are carefully split open and filled with these. Nests of spun caramel with hard-shelled sugar eggs are each topped with a triumphantly plump chocolate hen; pie-bald rabbits heavy with gilded almonds stand in rows, ready to be wrapped and boxed; marzipan creatures march across the shelves. The smells of vanilla essence and cognac and caramelized apple and bitter chocolate fill the house. And now there is Armande's party to prepare for, too. I have a list of what she wants on order from Agen- foie gras, champagne, truffles and fresh chanterelles from Bordeaux, plateaux de fruits de mer from the traitor in Agen. I will bring the cakes and chocolates myself.”

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Book:Chocolat
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“Again I linger over the names. Crème de cassis. Three nut cluster. I select a dark nugget from a tray marked Eastern Journey. Crystallized ginger in a hard sugar shell, releasing a mouthful of liqueur like a concentration of spices, a breath of aromatic air where sandalwood and cinnamon and lime vie for attention with cedar and allspice... I take another, from a tray marked Pêche au miel millefleurs. A slice of peach steeped in honey and eau-de-vie, a crystallized peach sliver on the chocolate lid.”

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Book:Chocolat
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