J.K. Rowling

"Working hard is important, but there's something that matters even more. Believing in yourself. Think of it this way: Every great wizard in history has started out as nothing more than we are now. Students. If they can do it, why not us?"

"What an idiot."

"The wand picks you, you don't pick the wand."

"Don’t let it worry you," said Ron. "It’s me. I’m extremely famous."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"You have to be free to fail in this world."

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

"I do believe something magical can happen when you read a good book"

"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 ..."

"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"

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

"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."

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

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention aand 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. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places. 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 close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know."

"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."

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