Chocolat by Joanne Harris

• Old habits never die.
• It was too direct. He would have liked us to dance a little, to circle each other like wary cats.
• The Lord sees everything.
• People need time to adapt to change.
• Remember why we fast for Lent. Not for vanity. Not to impress our friends. Not so that we can fit into next summer's expensive fashions. Remember Our Lord. His sacrifice. His humility.
• The devil is a coward; he will not show his face. He is without substance, breaking into a million pieces that worm their evil ways into the blood, into the soul.
• A man of any age can choose his friends where he likes.
• The process of giving is without limits. Some people never have to think about giving.
• You don't get degrees in life, do you?
• It's quite true what they say about village communities. Everyone wants to know your business! I expect it comes of having so little entertainment.
• What's forbidden always tastes better anyway.
• Divination is a means of telling ourselves what we already know. What we fear.
• Well, everyone has an opinion. Even a priest is entitled to that.
• It isn't up to me--or anybody--to decide how these people should live their lives.
• If that stubbornness of hers could be turned out instead of in, what could she not achieve? I had no right to force her to any decision.
• You're never too old to have a good time!
• That was what came of interfering. So easy to inflict pain on others, on myself.
• He has to learn to do things his own way.
• Nobody needs to do anything.
• I'll know when the time really comes. I'll know.
• After a while you just have to stop. It's pointless. Hiding behind justifications, setting short-term goals to see out the week. After a while it's the lack of dignity that hurts more than anything else.
• Better to be patient.
• I never needed any doctor--or any priest--to tell me what to think.
• What I do in my house is my own business.
• I'd rather choke than get rid of my cats. Though there are some humans I could give up without a second thought.
• If it isn't one thing, then it's another. It's a fact of life.
• Did we spend all those years running from our loves, our friendships, the casual words uttered in passing that can alter the course of a lifetime?
• Weeds and wheat cannot grow peacefully together.
• A friend is a friend.
• But there are no certainties.
• People who know nothing of real magic imagine it to be a flamboyant process. And yet the real business is very undramatic; simply focusing of the mind toward a desired objective. There are no miracles, no sudden apparitions.
• I don't think there is such a thing as a good or bad Christian. Only good or bad people.
• You are entitled to your beliefs. As long as they make you happy.
• And what--if it isn't an impertinent question--what do you believe? Magic carpet rides, rune magic. Ali Baba and visions of the Holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of red wine...Buddha. Frodo's journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resurrection and the Life at the turn of a card...I've believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to.
• I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
• You can't just run away from it all.
• Start running away, and you'll be on the run forever. Stay and fight.
• You have to fight him face to face. Otherwise you may as well never have left him.
• Sometimes it's better to leave things as they are, to let grief take its course.
• There are too many sad thoughts in the air already.
• I'd like to be an adventurer. To follow the sun with nothing but a single suitcase, to have no idea at all of where I might be tomorrow. Believe me, you get tired. And after a while everywhere starts to look the same.
• Places all have their own characters, and returning to a city where you have lived before is like coming home to an old friend.
• The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go, most people aren't really all that much different.
• If there were tears, the darkness hid them.
• I am not required to have an opinion. My role is to offer advice and comfort.
• We do not--interpret--God's laws to suit ourselves. Or the law of our country.
• Death should be a celebration, like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: Ahhhh!
• Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.
• That's what old people do. They die. It's a fact of life. Happens all the time.
• At my age I can be anything I please. I can be absurd if I feel like it. I'm old enough to get away with anything.
• Physical pleasure is the crack into which the devil sends his roots.
• Fill those spaces with something worthwhile. Otherwise the weeds will always get in.
• As for God--I don't think that white collar gives you sole right of access to the divine.
• It won't ever be any easier than it is today.
• You can't put things back to what they were.
• Life's full of surprises.
• I would leaf through my collection of cookery cards, incanting the names of never-tasted dishes like mantras, like the secret formulae of eternal life.
• People always think the fun has to stop when you get old. Well, it doesn't.
• Evil lives with us. Evil wears a winning smile and bright colors.

1/4/2007