The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.

Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.

I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.

Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?” James lifted an invisible sword. “‘Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ Like my dad.” Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him. “Got a problem with that?” “No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy —” “Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected Sirius.

And what in the name of Merlin’s most baggy Y Fronts was that about?

The stories we love best do live in us forever.