Joanne Harris Quotes

A thing named is a thing tamed.

Naming is a privilege of reason and the province of bullies. We name to tame and to maim; to honor the great, the dead, and ourselves.

Names govern the world.

Lists are a form of power.

Who is the architect? I am the architect.

I like control.

You see the names of places roundabout? They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.

Order is power.

I was the law and order.

Watch out for the man who talks of putting things in order. Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

No true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority…. Do the sheep when they are all assembled together rule and guide the shepherd?

When I came into the oil there was chaos. I brought order…. It was done the way it was because that was the way it had to be done.

What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.

… one accumulates or one gets accumulated.

Defining something being a Fleetwood Mac song is calling it a Fleetwood Mac song, you know? Nothing becomes Fleetwood Mac until that's what you call it.

I will it, I order it, let my will stand for a reason.

Whether the person should then be called "an intellectual" seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology.

For the present you can just call me the Kingfish.

If some small storekeeper somewhere decides he's not going to pay the money, the Godfather doesn't let him get away with it. The money doesn't mean anything to him, but he sends in his goons to beat him to a pulp. You have to establish credibility, otherwise conformity to your orders will tend to erode. International affairs runs in much the same way.

Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?

Power is the flower of organization.

The desire to order other people around and make them conform to one own's vision takes many forms.

What action could bodies and substances have if they were not named in a further increase of dignity where common nouns become proper nouns?

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.

We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may "conquer" them.