I never need to find time to read. When people say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, I love reading. I would love to read, but I just don’t have time,’ I’m thinking, ‘How can you not have time?’ I read when I’m drying my hair. I read in the bath. I read when I’m sitting in the bathroom. Pretty much anywhere I can do the job one-handed, I read.

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

Don't count your owls before they are delivered.

Neville will play Quidditch for England before Hagrid lets Dumbledore down.

During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference.

Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.