Joanne Harris

I don't listen to music when I'm writing, but I often do when I'm reworking, editing or when I need to relax.

People reveal so much of their mental processes online, simply because the psychological effect of anonymity just means that a whole raft of inhibitions are left alone when people log on.

I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you've been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things... Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.

I've nothing against kids reading anything they please, but I do have a problem with pink books for girls and black books for boys.

I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon.

I'm insatiably curious.

I was a very bad accountant; I didn't care about money, golf or discovering fraud. After about a year I was sacked; then I went into teacher training.

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 have an English identity and a French identity. When I'm in France, I'm more outgoing. And the French part of me cooks, whereas the English part of me writes.

I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.

I sublimate different parts of my personality through my characters. Which is worrying, as some of them can be a bit nasty. I'm pleased the stuff on the page isn't inside me any more.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

I'm quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don't mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out.

I was convinced I'd hate Twitter - but I've come to like it very much. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends and colleagues I wish I could see more often - I sometimes feel a little isolated living in Yorkshire, and it's nice to have the contact.

The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.

Some areas of technology really don't interest me at all, but I welcome anything that makes life easier instead of harder.

If you can actually get someone to sit on the edge of their seat and feel nervous if there's a knock at the door, then you've done something pretty terrific as a writer.

I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.

Writing books and being paid for it - it's not like winning the Lottery. You can't suddenly go, 'Yippee!' and start throwing tenners in the air. I've done pretty well out of it, but certainly not enough to say, 'Right, that's me set up for life.'

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 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 streets, a lot of other things would be fixed almost effortlessly.

I'm not fond of cities: the constant activity and swarms of people.

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 am fascinated by how people eat and what it reveals about them.

I have a tendency to pick up my own challenges. The more difficult something it is, the more I want to try it.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

No one should be so precious as to refuse criticism of their work. But to respect an opinion, we have to know that it was given honestly and with proper thought.

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 become as close to us as our loved ones.

A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online.

From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.

Online communities are an expression of loneliness.

I'm incapable of hiding my feelings when I'm around someone I don't like.

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

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.

I think everybody has a secret life.

I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.

It may be something to do with my having been to a girls' school, but I'm far more comfortable making male friendships than female ones. My friends tend to be men and their significant others.

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.

Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.

My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.

For me, the magic of Hawaii comes from the stillness, the sea, the stars.

I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.

I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia.

If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.

The interesting thing about the Internet is that it has created a kind of alternative circle of friends for people.

I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.

I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.

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 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.

Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.