J.k. Rowling Quotes

And 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.

~ J.k. Rowling

My readers have to work with me to create the experience. They have to bring their imaginations to the story. No one sees a book in the same way, no one sees the characters the same way. As a reader you imagine them in your own mind. So, together, as author and reader, we have both created the story.

~ J.k. Rowling

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. 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.

~ J.k. Rowling

He hurried to car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn't approve of imagination.

~ J.k. Rowling

I enjoyed the meetings, too. It was like having friends.

~ J.k. Rowling

What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed? said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. Only innocent lives, Peter!You don't understand! whined Pettigrew. He would have killed me, Sirius!THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! roared Black. DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!

~ J.k. Rowling

Ah, Harry, how often this happens, even between the best of friends! Each of us believes that what he has to say is much more important than anything the other might have to contribute!

~ J.k. Rowling

I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them.”“I didn’t want —”“— to worry or frighten them?” said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.

~ J.k. Rowling

He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby's front, and that he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass.Dobby, no, don't die, don't die -The elf's eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words.Harry...Potter...And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.

~ J.k. Rowling

Karakarof spat onto the ground at Dumbledore's feet. In one swift movement, Hagrid seized the front of Karkaroff's furs, lifted him into the air, and slammed him against a nearby tree.

~ J.k. Rowling

True coolness is the incidental by-product of higher pursuits.

~ J.k. Rowling

It's all right, Ginny. It's over. It's just a memory.

~ J.k. Rowling

Oh, are you doing magic? Let’s see it, then.”She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.“Er — all right.”He cleared his t

~ J.k. Rowling

Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!

~ J.k. Rowling

The spells are made up. I have met people who assure me, very seriously, that they are trying to do them, and I can assure them, just as seriously, that they don’t work.

~ J.k. Rowling

The Prime Minister gazed hopelessly at the pair of them for a moment, then the words he had fought to suppress all evening burst from him at

~ J.k. Rowling

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.-Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, page 299

~ J.k. Rowling

...but it's not so much having to repair the damage, it's more the attitude behind the vandalism, Harry. Muggle-baiting might strike some wizards as funny, but it's an expression of something much deeper and nastier...

~ J.k. Rowling

Only Muggles talk of the ‘mind reading.’ The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is complex and many-layered thing, Potter… or at least, most minds are…

~ J.k. Rowling

Why would anyone bother making door-keys shrink?’ said George.‘Just Muggle-baiting,’ sighed Mr Weasley. ‘Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it ... Of course, it’s very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking – they’ll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it’s staring them in the face ...

~ J.k. Rowling

Harry―yer a wizard.

~ J.k. Rowling

For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway.

~ J.k. Rowling

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

~ J.k. Rowling

She was half running away from the hall, and she knew that she had done something cataclysmic, and she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the darkness and to disappear forever.

~ J.k. Rowling

Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.

~ J.k. Rowling

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.

~ J.k. Rowling

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

~ J.k. Rowling

Bed rest and a large steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up.

~ J.k. Rowling

Ron: Why spiders? Why couldn't it be follow the butterflies?

~ J.k. Rowling

Merlin's pants!

~ J.k. Rowling

Just because you’re allowed to use magic now you don’t have to whip your wands out for every tiny little thing!

~ J.k. Rowling

Potter, you can skin Malfoy's shrivelfig.

~ J.k. Rowling

Much as he detested Filch, Harry couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him, though not nearly as sorry as he felt for himself.

~ J.k. Rowling

Why are you worrying about you-know-who?You should be worrying about u-no-poo!The constipation sensation that's gripping the nation!

~ J.k. Rowling

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

~ J.k. Rowling

Hagrid: Harry -- yer a wizard.Harry: I'm a what?

~ J.k. Rowling

Hermione: You! You foul loathsome evil little cockroach!

~ J.k. Rowling

Ron: [mimicking Hermione] It's Levi-OOOOH-sa not LevioSAR. She's a nightmare, honestly. It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends!

~ J.k. Rowling

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

~ J.k. Rowling

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!

~ J.k. Rowling