If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other.

There is no good or evil: only power and those too weak to seak it.

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

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.

Never be ashamed! There's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth bothering with.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

What's coming will come and we'll just have to meet it when it does.

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

To the philosopher, death is but the next great adventure.

Death is just life's next big adventure.

I really don't believe in magic.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.

'Harry Potter' gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else.

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.

Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

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.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

I always felt an outsider.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

I am proud of having done what I've done. Very proud.

I am the freest author in the world.

I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity.

I do get recognized, but I must say Edinburgh is a fantastic city to live if you're well-known. There is an innate respect for privacy in Edinburgh people, and I also think they're used to seeing me walking around, so I don't think I'm a very big deal.

I don't need to publish to make a living.

I don't read 'chick lit,' fantasy or science fiction but I'll give any book a chance if it's lying there and I've got half an hour to kill.

I don't think I am evangelical in my work.

I feel 80% of my life is completely normal.

I felt I had to solve everyone's problems.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

I just hate meetings. Though it's true that once you've made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don't want to seize every opportunity to do so.