Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English author J. K. Rowling.
Last updated on October 10, 2024.
Joanne Rowling, also known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote a seven-volume children's fantasy series, Harry Potter, published from 1997 to 2007. The series has sold over 500 million copies, been translated into at least 70 languages, and spawned a global media franchise including films and video games. The Casual Vacancy (2012) was her first novel for adults. She writes Cormoran Strike, an ongoing crime fiction series, as Robert Galbraith.
Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.
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.
I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.
The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.
It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
Death is just life's next big adventure.
Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.
I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.
You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.
The thing about fantasy - there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy.
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.
Never be ashamed! There's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth bothering with.
The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.
Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
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.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever - was write novels.
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.
The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.
The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.
And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.
I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.
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 to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
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.
If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.
To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
I really don't believe in magic.
When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.
There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other.
Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.
I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.
The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.
I am proud of having done what I've done. Very proud.
Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most.
When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.
What's coming will come and we'll just have to meet it when it does.
It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.
Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.
Secretly we're all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.
Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone - I think it does really, I'm just a little more out about it.
In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.
There's no formula.
Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
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.
It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.
If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.
You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.
I always felt an outsider.
'Harry Potter' gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else.