Quotes by J. K. Rowling

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.

I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that.

We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

I'm pro Union.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, do not cave in to endless requests to have essential and long overdue meetings on those days.

A good first impression can work wonders.

Although people rarely died playing Quid-ditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert.

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

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write.

Why had he never appreciated the miracle that he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?

There is no part of me that feels that I represented myself as your children's babysitter or their teacher. I was always, I think, completely honest. I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you're my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get to me through you.

I've been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can't really say where the desire came from; I've always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down!

But she's ditched Dean!

You fail by default when you live so cautiously you never fail.

Both could feel the relationship crumbling to pieces beneath the weight of everything that Gavin refused to say.

I sat and thought for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.

Contemplating the task ahead would not make it easier or the water warmer.

The truth is always easier than a lie or an evasion -- easier to deal with and easier to live with.

I loved writing Dumbledore and he is the epitome of goodness.

Hannah Abbott became the first to receive a Calming Draught from Madam Pomfrey after she burst into tears during Herbology and sobbed that she was too stupid to take exams and wanted to leave school now.

Ron's eyebrows rose so high that they were in danger of disappearing into his hair.

There's no formula.

It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?

Yes, it has made me happier. Finishing them has made me happier. Before I wrote the Potter books, I'd never finished a novel. I came close to finishing two.

Oh, very good,' interrupted Snape, his lip curling. 'Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. 'Ghosts are transparent.

I would never recommend my novel as a parenting guide. But we happen to live at a very hectic and hurried time, and I believe that many parents are too wrapped up in themselves.

Anything is possible, if you've got enough nerve.

Gavin saw a grave purely as a marker for the place where a corpse was decomposing; a nasty thought, yet people took it into their heads to visit and bring flowers, as though it might yet recover.

I had the idea of a boy who was a wizard and didn't yet know what he was. I never sat down and wondered, What shall I write about next? It just came, fully formed.

I'd always said never say never, because I knew that Warner Brothers wanted to do something with Fantastic Beasts, and I did have kind of a yen to do that.

The world is my oyster. I can do whatever I like.

I think the next thing I publish will be for children, but I don't really want to be held to that because I also know what my next book for adults will be, and I really like that, too, so it depends. I've always had more than one thing going.

He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.

They were the reason that he kept faith with his stars, that reinforced him in his belief that the universe had more in store for him than the mug's game of working for a modest salary until he retired or died.

She's as nutty as squirrel poo.

I'm a real sucker for guitars. I've had a crush on many, many a guitarist.

When in doubt, go to the library.

Poverty is a lot like childbirth -- you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it.

You'd think I walk around with my eyes shut, banging off the walls.

I am not trying to influence anyone into black magic. That is the very last thing I'd want to do.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.

Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.

Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?

Oh please, said Zacharias Smith, rolling his eyes and folding his arms. I don't think Expelliarmus is exactly going to help us against You-Know-Who, do you? I've used it against him, Harry said quietly. It saved my life last June.

I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was all alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames.

I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.

The barman sidled toward them out of a back room. He was a grump-looking old man with a great deal of a long gray hair and a beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Harry.

Harry had the impression that even the barman was listening in. He was wiping the same glass with the filthy rag; it was becoming steadily dirtier.

Why, dear boy, we don't send wizards to Azkaban just for blowing up their aunts.

From here on in, Harry, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron.

Children's books aren't textbooks. Their primary purpose isn't supposed to be Pick this up and it will teach you this. It's not how literature should be. You probably do learn something from every book you pick up, but it might be simply how to laugh.

I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, 'Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.'

Would you like a cough drop Dolores?

The world is full of wonderful things you haven't seen yet. Don't ever give up on the chance of seeing them.

Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy -- Wheezy who is giving Dobby his sweater!

Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right. -Albus Dumbledore.

You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head.

If someone asked for my recipe for happiness, step one would be finding out what you love most in the world and step two would be finding someone to pay you to do it. I consider myself very lucky indeed to be able to support myself by writing.

When you were straight, evil thoughts and memories came pouring up out of the darkness inside you; buzzing black flies clinging to the insides of your skull.

I've wanted to be an author as long as I can remember. English was always my favorite subject at school, so why I went on to do a degree in French is anyone's guess.

Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back.

When he straightened up again, there were six Harry Potters gasping and panting in front of him. Fred and George turned to each other and said together, Wow -- we're identical!

We tried to shut him in a pyramid, but Mum spotted us.

There's the silver lining I've been looking for.

It's the ability to resist failure, in many ways, or use failure that often leads to the greatest success, isn't it?

Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her.

Hermione: You! You foul, loathsome, evil little cocroach! Ron: Hermione, no! He's no worth it.

It's best to know what the enemy are saying.

Always the tone of surpise.

The presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what they were doing was right.

Harry -- you're a great wizard, you know. I'm not as good as you, said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him. Me! said Hermione. Books! And cleverness! There are more important things -- friendship and bravery and -- oh Harry -- be careful!

I tell you, that dragon's the most horrible animal I've ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you'd think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit.

I have gone temporarily deaf and haven't any idea what you said, Harry.

Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale; Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart; Let not the spirit of its growth depart: It is a power to brave the strongest gale.

There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.

Hallows, not Horcruxes.

Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form.

He'll accept anyone at Hogwarts, s'long as they've got the talent. Knows people can turn out okay even if their families weren' ...well ... all tha' respectable.

Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide -- except perhaps Hogwarts.

My daughter Jessica said to me recently, who wasn't sorted into Hufflepuff, 'I think we should all want to be Hufflepuffs.' I can only say to you, I would not be disappointed at all to be in Hufflepuff. I'm a little upset anyone does feel that way.

They may not look dangerous, but if angered bowtruckles will gouge out human eyes with their fingers, which, as you can see, are very sharp and not at all desirable near the eyeballs.

The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us?' Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.'

Bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise.

If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight.

There are always loose ends in real life.

Did you know-- then? asked Harry. Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time? No.

Someone creeping into his yard in the dead of night? More likely there's a very shell-shocked cat wandering somewhere, covered in potato peelings.

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.

They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer.

You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that.

Yeah,' said Ron. 'Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?' 'I still haven't ruled it out,' came Hermione's muffled voice from beneath her blankets, but Harry saw Ron smiling slightly as he pulled his maroon pajamas out of his rucksack.

Montague's just been found in a toilet, Sir.

I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you? Are you, you great ugly brute?

When the Dark Lord takes over, is he going to care how many O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s anyone's got? Of course he isn't... It'll be all about the kind of service he received, the level of devotion he was shown.

Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these, said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers. I'm not putting them on, said old Archie in indignation. I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks.

I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there.

I'm not putting them on, said old Archie in indignation. I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks.

Let muggles manage without us!

A lemon drop. They're a kind of Muggle sweet I'm rather fond of.

The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!

He never seemed to grasp the immense mutability of human nature, nor to appreciate that behind every nondescript face lay a wild and unique hinterland like his own.

Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs.

But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?

Parry Otter, the Chosen Boy Who -- well -- something of that sort.

She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her.

By all means continue destroying my possessions. I daresay I have too many.

At least my happiness doesn't depend on Ron's goalkeeping ability.

Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.

Cobbled streets and no shops open past six o'clock, a communal life that seemed to revolve around church, and where you could often hear bird song and nothing else: Gaia felt as though she had fallen through a portal into a land lost in time.

It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, it had been a quite personal question.

It's cruel that I got to spend so much time with James and Lily, and you so little. But know this; the ones that love us never really leave us. And you can always find them in here.

Potter is mocked by a faculty member for the idea that there is evil in the world from which even children need to learn to defend themselves by the actual practice of doing so rather than familiarity with theory.

Oh, he knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter.

I will be sharing additional information I've been hoarding for years about the world of Harry Potter.

I--I didn't think-- That, said Professor McGonagall, is obvious.

I would always want printed books.

Why don't you confer with Mr. Finnigan? As I recall, he has a particular proclivity for pyrotechnics.

Everyone wanted my emotions to be very simple. They wanted me to say, I was poor and I was unhappy, and now I've got money and I'm really happy.

Warrington's aim's so pathetic I'd be more worried if he was aiming for the person next to me.

Vot is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?

Sport is a very important subject at school, that's why I gave Quidditch such an important place at Hogwarts. I was very bad in sports, so I gave Harry a talent I would really loved to have. Who wouldn't want to fly?

Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless -- discuss.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.

What exactly is the function of a rubber duck?

Knocking the shrieking goblins aside like skittles.

If Harry Potter taught us anything, it's that no one should have to live in the closet.

It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever.

You are -- truly your father's son, Harry.

He might have crawled up into the airing cupboard and died, but I mustn't get my hopes up.

My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.

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.

Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here.

I say there are spots that don't come off.... Spots that never come off, d'you know what I mean?

I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.

The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms?

I'm a what? gasped Harry. A wizard, o' course, said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, an' a thumpin' good'un I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. You'll stay with me? Until the very end, said James.

She kept asking herself whether, if he had looked cleaner, she might have been more concerned; whether, on some subliminal level, she had confused his obvious signs of neglect with street-smartness, toughness and resilience.

I'm happy to talk in general themes, but when we get down to specifics about my family, for me that's always been off-limits.

Everything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours.

And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.

If he doesn't stop trying to save your life he's going to kill you.

Sometimes you have to stop trying to force it, walk away and let your subconscious show you the way. Fill up on life for a while.

Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress?

That's the perennial appeal of magic -- that we ourselves have power and we can shape our world. I sometimes think its very analogous to having a lot of money that people think -- 'cause that's kind of like a super power.

Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life.

Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment.

You don't understand -- there are things worth dying for!

And anyway, life's too short.

The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes -- and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.

Parvati positively beamed. Harry could tell that she was feeling guilty for having laughed at Hermione in Transfiguration. He looked around and saw that Hermione was beaming back, if possible even more brightly. Girls were very strange sometimes.

I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls.

My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities...like the ability to behave myself.