J. K. Rowling

"This isnt an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know its time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity."

"The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous. I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Waless secretary."

"He [Harry] is very much in puberty [...] I just think it is a very confusing time. Yes, hes very confused in a boy way. He doesn’t understand how girls minds work. [...] Harry, for the first time, does have a relationship of sorts. The emphasis is very much on of sorts . . . That was really fun to write actually. I think you will find it painful. You should find it painful. It is painful but it was such fun to write. Poor Harry! What I put him through."

"I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, "Ms. Rowling, Im so glad Ive read these books because now I want to be a witch." They see it for what it is [...] It is a fantasy world and they understand that completely. I dont believe in magic, either."

"If you need to tell your readers something … there are only two characters that you can put it convincingly into their dialogue. One is Hermione, the other is Dumbledore. In both cases you accept, its plausible that they have, well Dumbledore knows pretty much everything anyway, but that Hermione has read it somewhere. So, shes handy."

"[On her first marriage] I married on October 16, 1992. I left on November 17, 1993. So that was the duration of what I considered to be the marriage. ... [O]bviously you do not leave a marriage after that very short period of time unless there are serious problems. Im not the kind of person who bales out without there being serious problems. My relationship before that lasted seven years. Im a long-term girl. And I had a baby with this man. But it didnt work. And it was clear to me that it was time to go and so I went. I never regretted it."

"When the American deal came through, that meant security. It means that I can buy a flat. It means not worrying. The constant mind-blowing worry of wondering if you are going to be able to last the week without buying another pack of nappies. That is how it was and it is a horrible, horrible way to live."

"I went to the British Book Awards that evening. I bumped into a woman I hadnt seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? "Youve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!" "Well," I said, slightly nonplussed, "the last time you saw me Id just had a baby." What I felt like saying was, "Ive produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Arent either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?" But no — my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!"

"I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think its one of the reasons that some people dont like the books, but I think that its 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."

"Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So 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. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

"In psychoanalytic terms, having projected his childish rage onto the caricature Dursleys, and retained his innocent goodness, Harry now experiences that rage as capable of spilling outward, imperiling his friends. But does this mean Harry is growing up? Not really. The perspective is still childs-eye. There are no insights that reflect someone on the verge of adulthood. Harrys first date with a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an 8-year-olds conversational maneuvers."