Joanne harris

One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes...

When I write, I'm constantly putting myself in the position of someone else as I write using myriad voices; I think that's a life skill all people should learn.

I'm not sure I believe in the whole 'ghost-afterlife' thing, but I think places are marked by people who have been there.

I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.

I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.

I tend to write about more than one generation because as a child I had contact with more than one generation; it was normal to be around older people.

As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.

I find littering very annoying. It's a minor but also a major thing: a society that litters is one that also has so little respect for the environment and, consequently, other people. If we had clean...

My parents were language teachers. They talked about teaching all the time and all their friends were teachers. It was considered a pre-ordained thing that I would go into teaching.

I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.