If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

Yes, there are parallels. The difference is that I just look at [my son] David and think that he's absolutely perfect, whereas you look at the finished book and you think, 'Oh, damn it, I should have changed that.' You're never happy. Whereas with a baby, you're happy. If you've got a perfect baby, you're just grateful.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole.

I expect what you're not aware of would fill several books, Dursely.

I love being a writer. I am very lucky my life's ambition turned out to be just as much fun as I thought it would be.

You know, I don’t get why Fred and George only got three O.W.L.s each,” said Harry, watching as Fred, George, and Lee collected gold from the eager crowd. “They really know their stuff. . . .” “Oh, they only know flashy stuff that’s no real use to anyone,” said Hermione disparagingly. “No real use?” said Ron in a strained voice. “Hermione, they’ve got about twenty-six Galleons already. . . .