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Wikipedia Summary for J. K. Rowling
Joanne Rowling ( ROH-ling; born 31 July 1965), better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, philanthropist, film producer, television producer, and screenwriter. She is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book series in history. The books are the basis of a popular film series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts and was a producer on the final films. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in 1990 when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the last was released in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written several books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series. In 2020, her "political fairytale" for children, The Ickabog, was released in instalments in an online version.
Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life in which she progressed from living on benefits to being named the world's first billionaire author by Forbes. Rowling disputed the assertion, saying she was not a billionaire. Forbes reported that she lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity. Her UK sales total in excess of £238 million, making her the best-selling living author in Britain. The 2021 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £820 million, ranking her as the 196th richest person in the UK. Time named her a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. Rowling was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to literature and philanthropy. In October 2010, she was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. Rowling has supported multiple charities, including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, and Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, as well as launching her own charity, Lumos. Since late 2019, Rowling has publicly voiced her opinions on transgender people and related civil rights. These views have led to controversy.
Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, do not cave in to endless requests to have essential and long overdue meetings on those days.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
I really like how the sixth book is going. A lot happens in the sixth book and a lot of questions are answered. I really have a sense that we are nearly there and it is time for answers, not more questions and clues, although obviously there are a few clues as I am not quite finished yet.
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.
I haven't got the heart to take the mickey out of him, even, said Fred, looking over at Ron's crumpled figure. Mind you ... when he missed the fourteenth ... He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle. Well, I'll save it for parties, eh?
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.
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.
I'm a real sucker for guitars. I've had a crush on many, many a guitarist.
Enter, stranger, but take heed Of what awaits the sin of greed, For those who take, but do not earn, Must pay most dearly in their turn. So if you seek beneath our floors A treasure that was never yours, Thief, you have been warned, beware Of finding more than treasure there.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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!
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.
The presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what they were doing was right.
So top grade's O for 'Outstanding,' Hermione was saying, and then there's A- No, E, George corrected her, E for 'Exceeds Expectations.' And I've always thought Fred and I should've got E in everything, because we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams.
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.
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.
However,' said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, 'you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.
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.
Don' you worry, Harry. You'll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you'll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it's hard. Yeh've been singled out, an' that's always hard. But yeh'll have a great time at Hogwarts -- I did -- still do, 'smatter of fact.
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.
