The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

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

That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand new uniform...As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that if was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh.

I think what is probably hard for people to imagine is how wrapped up the 17 years' work on Harry Potter is with what was going on in my life at the time. I was mourning the loss of this world that I had written for so long and loved so much. I was also mourning the retreat it had been from - from ordinary life, which it has been. And it forced me to look back at 17 years of my life and remember things.

I sat and thought for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.

There is plenty of ambitious competition and hypocrisy in the middle class, which makes it a rather fertile environment for a writer.

I think writing about the time in Hermione’s life that I write about – growing from childhood into womanhood, literally, I think it brought back to me how very difficult it is.So much is expected of you as you become a woman, and often you are asked to sacrifice parts of you in becoming a girl, I would say. Hermione doesn’t.