Quotes by Deborah Harkness - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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Sir. My lord. Master Roydon." The young man blurted out most available titles except for "Your Majesty" and "Prince of Darkness." These were implied nonetheless.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Men
Darkness
Titles
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I love being outdoors and being with animals, and when you're on a horse, you have to leave your anxieties and worries behind in the barn. It's very therapeutic.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Horse
Therapeutic
Animals
Anxieties
Barn
Behind
Leave
Outdoors
Worries
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I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Discovery
Hiding
Pages
Plot
Relevant
Clues
Witches
Throughout
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I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Courtesy
Non Fiction
Reader
Rice
Vampire
Witch
Anne
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For me, a $20 wine that drinks like a $40 wine in terms of complexity and interest is a value, while a $5 wine that is not very good is not a value at all in my opinion.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Complexity
Wine
Drinks
Good Value Me
In My Opinion
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I wanted to know how humans came up with a view of the world that had so little magic in it. I needed to understand how they convinced themselves that magic wasn’t important.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Important
Magic
Views
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That evening, rowing on the quiet river as sunset turned to dusk, I saw an occasional smoky smudge on the towpath, always slightly ahead of me, like a dark star guiding me home.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Home
Stars
Sunset
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People think about history as all grand gestures or significant moments, but the most valuable lesson we can learn is the enduring legacy of the small, meaningful things in life.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Gestures
Legacy
Meaningful
Significant
Valuable
Life History People
Enduring
Grand
Lesson
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I realised that today we are very much interested in reading about subjects that would have also interested people in the 1500s: ghosts, demons and things that go bump in the night.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Night
Reading
Realised
Subjects
Interested
Bump
Demons
Ghosts
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His full name is Matthew Gabriel Philippe Bertrand Sebastien de Clermont. He was also a very good Sebastien, and a passable Gabriel. He hates Bertrand and will not answer to Philippe.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Gabriel
Hate
Names
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After finishing 'The Book of Life,' I needed a bit of a break from the Bishops and de Clermonts. Honestly, I wasn't sure when - or even if! - they would capture all of my attention again.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Bishops
Capture
Finishing
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I think you can learn a lot from primary sources. 'The Penguin Book of Witches,' which is edited by novelist Katherine Howe, is a wonderful compilation of primary sources about witchcraft.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Compilation
Edited
Witchcraft
Penguin
Sources
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Within days they'd formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Garden
Hair
Vampire
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I never had a plan to be a fiction writer. It's something that happened to me. Sometimes I think maybe it was my spectacular mid-life crisis. Some people buy expensive cars, and I wrote a novel.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Expensive
Mid Life Crisis
Spectacular
Me People Sometimes
Fiction Writer
Mid-Life
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Often, in books, I find female power to be cartoonish - power is a process, an evolution - it has responsibilities. It's not as simple as picking up your lightning bolt and throwing it at someone.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Lightning
Throwing
Bolt
Cartoonish
Picking
Responsibilities
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In this room we understand why this war might be fought...it's about our common belief that no one has the right to tell two creatures that they cannot love each other--no matter what their species.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
War
Might
Two
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Be yourself-- Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Being Yourself
Mother
Smell
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There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us where we park our anxieties, whether its over-powerful women, death or damnation. We make our own monsters.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Death
Literature
Monsters
Western
Anxieties
Note
Park
Tell
Vampires
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There is a lot of talk in the academy about the death of the humanities. Based on my readers' response and their interest in history and literature and art, the death of the humanities has been grossly overstated.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Academy
Response
Based
Humanities
Overstated
Readers
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I took a course on 'Magic, Alchemy, and Astrology' at Mount Holyoke, and it was a whole new awakening for me, a way of thinking about the world primarily in terms of concepts and words rather than mathematical formulas.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Alchemy
Astrology
Awakening
Concepts
Formulas
Mathematical
Thinking World Me
Mount
Primarily
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We live in a world where we think the mysterious is retreating farther and farther from our lives and eventually we will know all there is to know. I love the idea that somehow, there are still things that can be magical.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Mysterious
Love World Live
Farther
Magical
Retreating
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With knot of one, the spell's begun. With knot of two, the spell be true. With knot of three, the spell is free. With knot of four, the power is stored. With knot of five, the spell with thrive. With knot of six, this spell I fix.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Four
Three
Two
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I'm entranced by Amanda Lovelace's work. She wrote two wonderful books, 'The Princess Saves Herself in This One' and 'The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One.' You can feel your heart opening because she says things that you thought only you felt.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Amanda
Opening
Princess
Witch
Burn
Entranced
Herself
Saves
Says
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Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife in Elizabethan England. I had an elaborately convoluted title and an elaborately convoluted plotline, and at that point I got stupendously bored.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Bored
Convoluted
Elizabethan
England
Midwife
Series
Years Ago
Title
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I was a terrible science student, and for a long time, I thought I just didn't understand science. It turned out that I didn't understand post-Newtonian science. I could actually understand how people thought scientifically about the world in the past.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Scientifically
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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed (Albert Einstein)
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Art
Beautiful
Eye
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A lot of our assumptions of the world are fairly cynical, fairly negative, and assume the worst. What our reading tastes show - in this rush to fantasy, romance, whatever - is that we actually still want to believe in a world of possibility, in a world of mystery.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Cynical
Fantasy
Negative
Possibility
Romance
Worst
Fairly
Assume
Tastes
Rush
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My niece was very much caught up in the vampire craze for young adults, and she thought having a vampire boyfriend would be a cool thing. What do you do on a first date? The more I thought about it, the more fun I had imagining what you'd serve a vampire for dinner.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Boyfriend
Caught
Dinner
Niece
Vampire
Adult
Date
Cool Thing
Imagining
Serve
Young Adults
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After 20 years of writing academic prose and lectures, it seems very familiar and straightforward to me. Writing a novel for the first time, I was reminded of just how difficult it is to figure out how to get this stuff done when you don't really know what you're doing.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Academic
Familiar
Lectures
Prose
Straightforward
Time Done Me
Time Me Difficult
Reminded
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As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Decided
Historian
Horseback
Long Way
Passages
Soup
Window
Detail
Inn
Journeys
Spice
Wood
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Scholars do one of two things when they discover information that doesn't fit what they already know. Either they sweep it aside so it doesn't bring their cherished theories into question or they focus on it with laserlike intensity and try to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Focus
Trying
Two
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The occult sciences were simply ancient technologies for making the occult or unseen manifest in the world - whether that was the influence of the stars and planets, the mysterious meanings of lines inscribed in your palm, or forms of action at a distance like magic and spells.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Ancient
Distance
Manifest
Mysterious
Occult
Planets
Spells
Unseen
Palm
Meanings
Sciences
Technologies
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I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Discovery
Exploding
Genre
Grew
Harry Potter
Reading Books
Teach
Love Hope Will
Books
Witches
Generation
Harry
Point
Potter
Voracious
Readers
Serve
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I found a 'lost' manuscript called the Book of Soyga that had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer, John Dee, in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Everybody thought it was the missing key to Dee's interest in magic. Of course, it wasn't really lost. It was there, in the catalog.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Book
Found
Library
Lost
Magic
Missing
Oxford
Had
Belonged
Catalog
Course
Elizabeth
Queen
John
Manuscript
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These days vampires gravitated toward particle accelerators, projects to decode the genome, and molecular biology. Once they had flocked to alchemy, anatomy, and electricity. If it went bang, involved blood, or promised to unlock the secrets of the universe, there was sure to be a vampire around.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Blood
Secret
Vampire
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I'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Intriguing
Magic
People
Reluctant
Strange
Vampire
Witch
Writing
Years
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Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Fundamentals
Provocative
Together
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Witches are the kind of more traditional, home and family, craft people - so they're the ones who are making things; crocheting shawls and things like that. But then they also have that slightly confident, dangerous, edge. I always see them as having very extreme hair, either amazingly beautiful straight hair or kind of wild.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Traditional
Extreme
Amazingly
Confident
Wild
Witches
Craft
Edge
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I saw the logic that they used, and the death of a thousand cuts as experimental scientists slowly chipped away at the belief that the world was an inexplicably powerful, magical place. Ultimately they failed, though. The magic never really went away. It waited, quietly, for people to return to it when they found the science wanting.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Cutting
People
Powerful
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Ni muer ni viu ni no guaris, Ni mal no·m sent e si l’ai gran, Quar de s’amor no suy devis, Ni no sai si ja n’aurai ni quan, Qu’en lieys es tota le mercés Que·m pot sorzer o decazer.” “Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love. I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Dying
Healing
Pain
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Matthew kept hinting that his desire - for blood, chiefly- was so strong that it put everything else at risk. But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different- that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied- these could turn into deeds when they cross a witch’s mind.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Blood
Risk
Strong
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Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested, unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe.
Deborah Harkness / Novelist
Running
Hands
Long
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