Quotes from J. K. Rowling

It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left. . . .I've seen what you'll be otherwise. . . . Be a man . . . try . . . Try for some remorse. . . .

Snape is vindictive, he's cruel. He's not a big man. But he loves. I like him, but I'd also like to slap him hard.

In magic, man has to rely on himself. So, in religion, of course, you're looking for outside support but that's the appeal of magic.

Secretly we're all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Well, [bad] times like that bring out the best in some people and the worst in others.

I believe in hard work and luck, and that the first often leads to the second

Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

Some readers and commentators really want to scrape your insides out to make sense of your work. Others say, there's the work, it speaks for itself. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.

Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.

Hermione drew herself to her full height; her eyes were narrowed and her hair seemed to crackle with electricity. "No," she said, her voice quivering with anger, "but I will write to your mother.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

That's what they should teach us here. How girls' brains work... It would be more useful than divination, anyway.

I don't think I am evangelical in my work.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.

No, thanks," said Harry. "The toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it— it might be sick." Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.

I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.