I've been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can't really say where the desire came from; I've always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down!

She kept asking herself whether, if he had looked cleaner, she might have been more concerned; whether, on some subliminal level, she had confused his obvious signs of neglect with street-smartness, toughness and resilience.

What's interesting about the wizarding world is when you take physical strength out of the equation, a woman can do magic just as powerfully as a man can do magic. A woman can fight just the same as a man.

Sometimes ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It's a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works.

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.

According to Nietzche," said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, "philosophy is the biography of the philosopher.