My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.

We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on.

If there is a connection between Harry Potter and my new novel, it's my interest in characters.

I had the idea of a boy who was a wizard and didn't yet know what he was. I never sat down and wondered, "What shall I write about next?". It just came, fully formed.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition. Your qualifications are not your life.

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. "You'll stay with me?" "Until the very end," said James.

He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors roll by, obscuring the outside world.