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Blackberry Wine QUOTES

Blackberry Wine QUOTES

1 " You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

2 " Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

3 " The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

4 " The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

5 " A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

6 " It isn't just a village. The houses aren't just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

7 " Garden work clears the mind. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

8 " Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

9 " So much of his life seemed to be like this now, a blur of days without anything to define them from each other, like episodes of a soap he watched out of habit, even though none of the characters interested him. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

10 " The day stretched out in front of him like an empty road in the desert. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

11 " He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

12 " He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

13 " And yet I could still hear them. As if some part of their essence had evaporated into the air, become a part of this place, ingrained, like the scent of cigarettes and burning sugar, in the woodwork and plaster. Everything was buzzing with that vanished presence, buzzing and singing and laughing louder than ever before, stone and tile and polished wood, all whispering with agitation and excitement; never still, never silent. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

14 " There was a quote he could not quite remember, something about the past being an island surrounded by time. He had missed the last boat to the island. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

15 " You may be a foreigner, but you have the heart of a Frenchman. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

16 " The jackapples were long and red and oddly pointed at one end. One or two had been cut open as Joe dug them up, showing flesh which looked tropically pink in the sun. The boy staggered a little under the weight of the box.
"Watch your step," called Joe. "Don't drop 'em. They'll bruise."
"But these are just potatoes."
"Aye," said Joe, without taking his eyes from the vegetable cutter.
"I thought you said they were apples, or something."
"Jacks. Spuds. Taters. Jackapples. Poms de Tair."
"Don't look like much to me," said Jay.
Joe shook his head and began to feed the roots into the vegetable cutter. Their scent was sweetish, like papaya.
"I brought seeds for these home from South America after the war," he said. "Grew 'em right here in my back garden. Took me five years just to get the soil right. If you want roasters, you grow King Edwards. If you want salads, it's your Charlottes or your Jerseys. If it's chippers you're after, then it's your Maris Piper. But these..." He reached down to pick one up, rubbing the blackened ball of his thumb lovingly across the pinkish skin. "Older than New York, so old it doesn't even have an English name. Seed more precious than powdered gold. These aren't just potatoes, lad." He shook his head again, his eyes brimful of laughter under the thick gray brows. "These are me Specials."
Jay watched him cautiously. "So what are you making?" he asked at last.
Joe tossed the last jackapple into the cutter and grinned. "Wine, lad. Wine. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

17 " Just for a moment, she thought she smelled something, a strange, vivid scent of sugar and apples and blackberry jelly and smoke. It was a nostalgic scent, and for a second she could almost understand why Jay loved this place so much, with its little vineyards and its apple trees and its roaming goats on the marsh flats. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

18 " Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, every one- from the commonest Liebfraumilch to the imperious Vueve Clicquot- a humble miracle. Everyday magic, Joe had called it. The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman's alchemy.
Take these six in Jay's cellar, for instance. The Specials. Not wines really meant for keeping, but he kept them all the same. For nostalgia's sake. For a special, yet-to-be-imagined occasion. Six bottles, each with its own small handwritten label and sealed with candle wax. Each had a cord of a different color knotted around its neck; raspberry red, elderflower green, blackberry blue, rose hip yellow, damson black. The last bottle was tied with a brown cord. Specials '75, said the label, the familiar writing faded to the color of old tea. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

19 " It had withstood the years. His knife sliced it open and the cork was still intact beneath. For a moment the scent was so immediately pungent that all he could do was endure it, teeth clenched, as it worked its will on him. It smelled earthy and a little sour, like the canal in midsummer, with a sharpness which reminded him of the vegetable cutter and the gleeful tang of freshly dug potatoes. For a second the illusion was so strong that he was actually there in that vanished place with Joe leaning on his spade and the radio wedged in a fork in a tree.
A sudden overwhelming excitement took hold of him and he poured a small quantity of the wine into a glass, trying not to spill the liquid in his eagerness. It was dusky pink, like papaya juice, and it seemed to climb the sides of the glass in a frenzy of anticipation, as if something inside it were alive and anxious to work its magic on his flesh. "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine

20 " The smell of thyme was pungent in the air. It grew wild by the roadside. Thyme improves the memory, Joe used to say. He used to make a syrup out of it, keeping it in a bottle in the pantry. Two tablespoonsful every morning before breakfast. That clear greenish liquid smelled exactly like the night air over Lansquenet, crisp and earthy and nostalgic, like a summer day's weeding in the herb garden, and the radio on... "

― Joanne Harris , Blackberry Wine