J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE, FRSL, pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British novelist, screenwriter and film producer best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history and been the basis for a series of films which is the second highest-grossing film series in history. Rowling had overall approval on the...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth31 July 1965
CityYate, England
The sky was a cold iron-grey, like the underside of a shield. A sharp breeze lifted the hems of skirts and rattled the leaves on the immature trees; a spiteful, chill wind that sought out your weakest places, the nape of your neck and your knees, and which denied you the comfort of dreaming, of retreating a little from reality.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than for being right.
Most important in a friendship? Tolerance and loyalty.
I write every day, on some days 10 or eleven hours, but sometimes only three hours, it depends if I got enough ideas.
Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. (Dumbledore)
My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.
Whatever the reviewers feel about 'The Casual Vacancy', it is what I wanted it to be, and you can't say fairer than that as a writer.
You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.
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.
I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.
I'm not anti-middle-class in the slightest. Look at me! I am very pro people putting time and money and effort into trying to improve the world.
We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.