Joanne Harris Quotes

I have been to hell and back. I have seen the edge. I have seen the dark side of life.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

I've overcome neglect and deprivation, abandonment and abuse.

I got hit a lot. I'm glad I lived through it.

The only thing I know how to do is survive.

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

Don’t ask me when be­cause I don’t re­mem­ber, but some­where along the way I keep for­get­ting to com­mit sui­cide.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

I have survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.

All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.

This show has shown me how to throw a punch. But watching my future sister-in-law go through breast cancer has also shown me how to take one.

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

I exist in a world that's pretty gruesome. All I can tell you is this: I'm trying to keep my balance.

I'm surprised that I've survived my own dysfunction, really.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

My truth is that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker rather than stronger, although it makes you wiser.

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear.

I can't believe I survived, not only my life, but I am still playing football 'cause half of those eight or nine years I don't even remember.

There is one good thing about reaching the bottom. When you get there, there's nothing left to do but fight your way back up or die.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.