Blackberry Wine Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Garden work clears the mind.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“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

“The day stretched out in front of him like an empty road in the desert.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“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

“He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Too much balast slows you down.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“You may be a foreigner, but you have the heart of a Frenchman.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“He pulled out stiff starched sheets, yellowed at the creases, each sheet embroidered with an elaborate medallion in which the letters D.F. twined above a garland of roses; some woman's trousseau from a hundred- two hundred- years back. There were other treasures too: sandalwood boxes of handkerchiefs, copper saucepans dulled with verdigris, an old radio from before the war, he guessed, its casing cracked to reveal tubes as big as doorknobs. Best of all was a huge old spice chest of rough black oak, some of its drawers still labeled in faded brown ink: Cannelle, Poivre Rouge, Lavande, Menthe Verte. The long-empty compartments were still fragrant with the scents of those spices, some dusted with a residue which colored his fingertips with cinnamon and ginger and paprika and turmeric.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“In return, Joe taught Jay more about the garden. Slowly the boy learned to tell lavender from rosemary from hyssop from sage. He learned to taste soil- a pinch between the finger and thumb slipped under the tongue, like a man testing fine tobacco- to determine its acidity. He learned how to calm a headache with crushed lavender, or a stomachache with peppermint. He learned to prepare skullcap tea and chamomile to aid sleep. He learned to plant marigolds in the potato patch to discourage parasites and to pick nettles from the top to make ale and to fork the sign against the evil eye if ever a magpie flew past.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“Виното говори. Всички го знаят. Огледайте се наоколо. Попитайте оракула на ъгъла на улицата; неканения гост на сватбеното тържество; блажения безумец. То говори. Говори като вентрилок. Има милион гласове. Развързва езика, извежда на бял свят тайни, които никога не сте искали да споделите, тайни, които дори не сте знаели. То крещи, декламира, шепне. Разказва за велики дела, блестящи планове, трагични любовни истории и ужасяващи предателства. Пищи от смях. Тихо се подсммихва под мустак. Плаче пред собственото си отражение. Връща ни към отдавна отминали лета и най-грижливо забравени спомени. Всяка бутилка носи полъха на други времена, други места, всяко едно - от най-простото "Либфраумилх" до високомерното "Вьов Клико" от 1945 година - малко чудо. Всекидневна магия, както го наричаше Джо. Трансформиране на основна материя в свят от мечти. Лаическа алхимия.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“My part is at an end. I would like to think that theirs ends as happily. But that knowledge is beyond me now. I am subject to a different kind of chemistry. Evaporating blithely into the bright air, my own mystery approaches, and I see no phantoms, predict no futures, even the blissful present barely glimpsed – through a glass, darkly.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Joe often gave out little charms – goodwill charms, he called them – to visitors, and Jay began to do the same: tiny bunches of lavender or mint or pineapple sage, tied with ribbons of different colours – red for protection, white for luck, blue for healing.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“A tiny chuckle emerged from the bottle’s throat as the wine filled the glass.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Joe had always pretended indifference to flowers. He preferred fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, things to be picked and harvested, stored, dried, pickled, bottled, pulped, made into wine. But there were always flowers in his garden all thee same. Planted as if on an afterthought: dahlias, poppies, lavender, hollyhocks. Roses twined among the tomatoes. Sweet peas among the bean poles. Part of it was camouflage, of course. Part of it a lure for bees. But the truth was that Joe liked flowers, and was reluctant even to pull weeds.
Jay would not have seen the rose garden if he had not known where to look. The wall against which the roses had once been trained had been partly knocked down, leaving an irregular section of brick about fifteen feet long. Greenery had shot up it, almost reaching the top, creating a dense thicket in which he hardly recognized the roses themselves. With the shears he clipped a few briars free and revealed a single large red rose almost touching the ground.
"Old rose," remarked Joe, peering closer. "Best kind for cookin'. You should try makin' some rose petal jam. Champion."
Jay wielded the shears again, pulling the tendrils away from the bush. He could see more rosebuds now, tight and green away from the sun. The scent from the open flower was light and earthy.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“All right, Monsieur Jay,' she said, smiling. 'I'll tell them you're OK.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“With a jolt of surprise, he realized he had not really wanted anything for twenty years.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“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

“Later, over his favorite grand crème in the Café des Marauds, he was listening with half an ear to Joséphine as she told him the story of the village's first chocolate festival and the resistance it had met from the church. The coffee was good, sprinkled with shavings of dark chocolate and with a cinnamon biscuit by the side of the cup. Narcisse was sitting opposite with his usual seed catalogue and a café-cassis.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Joe himself remained the same as ever, picking his early fruit and laying it out in crates, making jam from windfalls, pointing out wild herbs and picking them when the moon was full, collecting bilberries from the moors and blackberries from the railway banking, preparing chutney from his tomatoes, piccalilli from his cauliflowers, lavender bags for sleeplessness, wintergreen for rapid healing, hot peppers and rosemary in oil and pickled onions for the winter. And, of course, there was the wine. Throughout all that summer Jay smelled wine brewing, fermenting, aging. All kinds of wine: beet root, pea pod, raspberry, elderflower, rose hip, jackapple, plum, parsnip, ginger, blackberry. The house was a distillery, with pans of fruit boiling on the stove, demijohns of wine waiting on the kitchen floor to be decanted into bottles, muslins drying on the clothesline for straining the fruit, sieves, buckets, bottles, funnels, laid out in neat rows ready for use.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine