The wizards represent all that the true "muggle" most fears: They are — J. K. Rowling

"I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death."

"It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags — because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter — scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. Theres joy, relief and safety in conformity."

"Im concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility."

"I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione turned white – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm."

"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."

"[Something] I explore in the Potter books [is that] a sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things. You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many many many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness. Believed they were doing the right thing. Felt themselves justified in what they were doing."

"Yeah, there was a period in the late 80s where I was working with different shaman. Myself and a friend, Beene, would take ayahuasca - but it wouldnt be in the liquid form, it would be a freeze-dried pill - and mushrooms. Some of those trips were eighteen hours long and Ill never forget, once I ended up sitting by the bush trying to ask the flowers why they didnt like me. Its like, Why cant I be your friend? I was crawling out of my skin at that time. In my twenties I was really... I was just losing my mind."

"I confess without shame that I am tired & sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies […] It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrills & groans of the wounded & lacerated (friend or foe) that cry aloud for more blood & more vengeance, more desolation & so help me God as a man & soldier I will not strike a foe who stands unarmed & submissive before me but will say ‘Go sin no more.’"

"Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he? He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air. A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a cranes and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a birds, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek."

"[in a letter to Clarice Starling] Dear Clarice, I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming. My own never bothered me, except for the inconvenience of being incarcerated, but you may lack perspective."

"They are shamelessly copying us."

"The hearts of their families are still broken and bereaved and our people remain grief-stricken and angry. Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event, Saudi rulers- with utmost shamelessness and insolence- refused to allow the formation of an international Islamic fact-finding committee."