J. k. rowling quotes

I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.

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.

I think that I've had a very strange life.

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.

Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often. Best to say nothing at all, my dear man.

In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.

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

There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place.

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Always have a vivid imagination, for you never know when you might need it.

I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.

I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.

The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

It's the same story with a few crucial additions; the most important one is you.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

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

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

Read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

There will always be a easy path and a right path.

No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental, or emotional. To hurt is as human as to breathe.

You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no . . . anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just — exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever . . . lost.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

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.

Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.

It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . .

It's our choices, more than anything, that show who we really are.

He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.

Because that's what Hermione does,' said Ron, shrugging. 'When in doubt, go to the library.

Don't let the muggles get you down.

People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.

Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.

Hope springs forever.

Sometimes ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It's a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works.

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.

What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

there is plenty to be learned even from a bad teacher: what not to do, how not to be

I definitely know that-that love is the most powerful thing of all and I remember thinking that-God, I'm about to make myself cry but, I remember thinking that when 9/11 happened because those last phone calls were about-the last thing knowingly, that I'm going to say on this earth is 'I love you.' What's more powerful than that? What's more proof than that? Beyond fear, beyond death.

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.

Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.

Size is no guarantee of power.

It’s so difficult to describe [depression] to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling — that really hollowed-out feeling.

Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own —” “That’s enough, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.

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

We can't choose our fate, but we can choose others. Be careful in knowing that.

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

Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.

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

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

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

When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.

Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.

Failure is not fun. It can be awful. But living so cautiously that you never fail is worse.

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry. And I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's places. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves it's own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

Courtesy dictates that we offer fellow wizards the opportunity of denying us entry.

It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us.

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

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.

You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.

Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.

She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves.

What's the worst that could happen? Everyone turned me down; big deal.

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.

The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters.

We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.

There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

Get up, you useless lump, get up!

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

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

To hurt is as human as to breathe.

Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

We have to choose between what is right, and what is easy.

The stories we love best do live in us forever.

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

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

... perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.

For that was the terrible power of the dementors: to force their victims to relive the worst memories of their lives, and drown, powerless, in theirown despair. . . .

What's most important in a friendship? Tolerance and loyalty.

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.

Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.

I definitely know that love is the most powerful thing of all.

Assuming I survive our hunt for the Horcruxes, I’ll find Mum and Dad and lift the enchantment. If I don’t – well, I think I’ve cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy. Wendell and Monica Wilkins don’t know that they’ve got a daughter, you see.

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

Remus Lupin was supposed to be on the H.I.V. metaphor. It was someone who had been infected young, who suffered stigma, who had a fear of infecting others, who was terrified he would pass on his condition to his son. And it was a way of examining prejudice, unwarranted prejudice towards a group of people. And also, examining why people might become embittered when they're treated that unfairly.

You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it's whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. The wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead.

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.

We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.

Life is too short. I only want to do things that I enjoy, or that I think are good or worth doing.

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

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.

The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

Abundance is the quality of life you live and quality of life you give to others.

Time is making fools of us again.

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing.

The ones that love us never really leave us.

There will be books written about Harry. Every child in the world will know his name.

It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

Wherever I am, if I've got a book with me, I have a place I can go and be happy

Achievable goals are the first step to self improvement.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it's disrupting our society. In Great Britain, there is a steady decline in the willingness to be truly generous, and by that I don't mean monetary generosity, but friendship and sympathy for others.

Death comes for us all in the end.

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.

Imagination is ... the foundation of all invention and innovation.